Prisoner of War
by sheffers
Summary: Curiosity gets the better of eighteen year old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. Full summary and warning inside. Pre HBP
1. Prologue

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

**Prologue: Prisoner of War**

**Daily Prophet**

**Saturday 4th September, 1999**

**CRIMES REVEALED!**

**Death Eaters Disregard International Laws: The 1949 Geneva Convention Is Broken**

Since the latest war against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named started in June 1995, amid the raging battles and terror attacks there have been mysterious disappearances … rumours of Death Eater camps, witches and wizards being tortured as the Death Eaters continued their actions of the first war. Until this month they have been just rumours. Today, the Daily Prophet can now exclusively reveal that these horrifying rumours are true.

On the 20th of August, Jessica Stevens, 18, was captured while fighting against Death Eaters during an attack on Muggles in Holyhead, North Wales. Held at an unknown location, she managed to escape after nine days of mental, physical and sexual torture. Found wandering in Wiltshire, she was sent to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and spent four days recovering from her injuries. Since her release yesterday, she has agreed to talk exclusively to the Daily Prophet about her shocking treatment as a prisoner of war.

"It is the worst thing that you can ever imagine and very hard to think about, let alone describe to someone. Unfortunately I can't seem to think about anything else," said the distraught and tearful teenager. When asked why she agreed to relive the horror of the past fortnight to make her story public, she responded with, "People need to know what is really going on."

Miss Stevens comes from a prominent Wizarding family and is a talented young witch who became Head Girl at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She completed her education in June of this year and achieved 'Outstanding' in all her Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests. Upon leaving school, she joined the fight against You-Know-Who along with many other students, such as fellow Gryffindors, Shaun Johnson, Lisa Sheridan, Ginevra Weasley, and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students, Luna Lovegood, Dwight Shacklebolt and Carlton Vance.

"My family have always been loyal to and supported Albus Dumbledore. We hate the Dark Arts therefore it seemed only natural to join in the fight. After all, who wants to live in a world where You-Know-Who's dictatorship and terror controls every part of your life?"

During our interview with Miss Stevens, she revealed to us a tale of unimaginable horror. The details presented here, while not pleasant, are grim reminders of the forces of evil that all decent Wizardkind should be prepared to fight against. They come at the personal cost of not only one young witch and her family, but also the peace of mind of each and every witch and wizard in our world.

"Pureblood witches like myself are being labelled as 'blood traitors who are unworthy of our birthright' and repeatedly tortured, both physically and mentally, at the same time as being starved and raped. At times I wished they would just kill me like they did with others, instead of me letting me live in hell."

"There is a distinction made between blood and backgrounds, with Muggle-borns being killed on sight. They call it 'purifying the blood'. I heard one Death Eater say that he wouldn't 'pollute his body by letting a Mudblood touch it.' But maybe they were the lucky ones; at least their end was quick."

"Time lost all meaning when the hours endlessly blended into each other. I was terrified for every single second I was there, praying that each time the door opened they would take someone else. I lost any bravery I had and cried so much at just the thought of what they might do to me again. My whole body ached, I was a mess and even after coming home, even though I know I'm safe, I am still struggling to close my eyes."

"But at least I had been captured while fighting, and not an abducted innocent like others. There were a number of young witches that had been taken hostage, purely because they came from families that supported Dumbledore. It's almost as if the Death Eaters have a hit list of young witches they want to track down."

Citizens of the Wizarding world should be outraged to hear of these atrocities. Similar rumours made during the first rise of You-Know-Who were quickly overturned in the Wizengamot, despite the existence of the Geneva Convention.

Fifty years ago in August 1949, the Geneva Convention was written to protect all witches and wizards in the world. In the four years since Albus Dumbledore's successful triumph over the Dark Wizard, Grindelwald, the world discovered a growing list of atrocities that had been committed between 1939 and 1945 under the Dark Wizard's rule of terror. It was agreed by the nations of the world that this should never be allowed to happen again. Thus the International Convention for the Protection of Victims of War was held in Geneva and signed by all the countries in the world.

Speaking no more than a month ago at the fiftieth anniversary, Minister of Magic, Amelia Bones, stated, "These laws were written for the protection of all witches and wizards. We may be at war but that only makes it more vital that the Geneva Conventions are honoured. Unfortunately, we are facing an aggressor who has little respect for others and even less interest in controlling the activities of those who follow him. Let it be known that anyone found not complying with the International Convention for the Protection of Victims of War will suffer the full consequences of the law."

With the testimony of Miss Stevens, it seems clear that there are violations of at least five separate articles of the Geneva Convention; four articles concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and one article about the position of a war power within an occupied territory. The articles in their entirety are reprinted on page seventeen.

The Daily Prophet would like to applaud Miss Stevens for her bravery. In this age of uncertainty, it is remarkable the courage that witches and wizards throughout the world are summoning.

When asked if she would be returning to fight against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named after she had finished recovering at her parent's home, Stevens gave a defiant yes.

"We can't continue to let this happen and we have to be strong now no matter how hard it is, otherwise what future have we got?"


	2. Chapter One

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter One: Scarlet And Gold

The dark, shabby pub was smoky from the abundant number of lit pipes and the large fire that roared in the fireplace. Turning a bright emerald green, the flames roared to life and a soot-covered man stepped forth only to be lost in the crowd of witches and wizards who had stopped by the famous inn. Amid the hum of chatter, a group of six elderly witches were engaged in a lively conversation with the bald and hunch-backed landlord.

Hidden in the corner of a small room, sat a petite, young witch engulfed by her cloak. Her hair had been hastily pulled into a loose ponytail and several strands of vibrant red fell softly against her pale face. Her eyes a chocolate-brown colour and ordinarily sparkling with mischief were concealed as she kept her head down, trying not to draw attention to herself. Her elbows rested on the dark oak table in a manner that would have caused her mother to scold her for hours, as she read the paper and waited for her boyfriend of two years to turn up.

Despite the growing noise around her, the teenage redhead seemed to have shut out any possible disturbances. Her eyes were bright with tears that she was holding back and refusing to shed, and a lump had risen in her throat. She was not going to let Riddle or those cowards in white masks make her cry, despite what had happened. She had shed far too many tears because of them; enough to last a lifetime in just one single year. She was not going to let them violently mess with her heart and mind, and throw her emotions around like a Quaffle anymore.

Her hands had whitened as they gripped onto the glass of Fire Whiskey in front of her. She had been nursing that very drink for the last half an hour as she stared down at the day's copy of the Daily Prophet.

The Wizarding daily newspaper very rarely carried any positive news now. Something to celebrate, or even something just trivial and light-hearted were scarce items. As the war continued to rage across Britain and into the rest of the world with the latest Death Eater attacks reported in Perth, Australia; the articles on celebrities' marriages or affairs and sporting successes were gone. Now in their place were articles on laws for individual protection, cancelled and terrorised sporting events, and reports of death and destruction.

After four years, the Wizarding world seemed no closer to defeating Tom Riddle, or ridding the world of Death Eaters. For an evil dictator, Riddle was as much a coward as his followers that hid behind masks. He hardly lifted his wand and preferred to use intimidation and coercion instead of direct action himself. Riddle would stay in the background and give orders, letting the Death Eaters do his dirty work and making it almost impossible to destroy him. Hermione had suggested that it was because he wasn't going to put himself in danger and risk being banished from his body again until he knew the exact wording of the prophecy, thus making him scared to face Harry.

Riddle had instead chosen to give his Death Eaters a free hand to cripple his enemies in any way they wished. This had lead to the number of Death Eaters swelling quicker than their own. After all, as the ensconced young witch knew only too well, Tom had always been able to flatter people and convince them to do what he needed. Rumours were rife about Death Eater atrocities while the Dark Mark was often seen hanging over homes throughout the country. Deep down they all knew, due to their spies, that they were not just rumours.

Ginny Weasley knocked back the dregs of the amber liquid that remained in the glass and looked over towards the bar. "Can I take another glass of Fire Whiskey, please Tom?"

"Of course," he said as he lowered his head into a slight bow and poured another glass of Fire Whiskey from a large red bottle. "But I thought you were just passing through on your way to meet young Mr Potter or to go to Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes."

She tightened her lips and her brow creased as she narrowed her eyes looking at the landlord. "Am I that predictable?"

"I just like to keep an eye out for pretty, talented young witches such as yourself. Especially with the family you come from and the number of brothers that you have. It's the wise thing to do."

A shudder ran down her spine. "I think that is comforting."

Tom pushed a glass of Fire Whiskey across the table and towards her. "So what are you reading?"

"The Daily Prophet."

"That will give you nightmares," he growled as he turned to leave. "It's a terrible thing to happen to such a remarkable young witch. Wouldn't like to see it happen again. So don't you spend too much time on your own, it's just not safe."

"I can take care of myself, Tom. Like you said, I come from a pretty powerful family so there's really no need to worry," she replied as she forced a small smile. "Besides, the man who puts my life in danger should be getting here soon, so maybe that's when people should worry a little bit."

"If you say so," Tom said as he gave a slight bow and walked away. "Enjoy your drink, Miss Weasley."

She watched for a couple more seconds as the old barman made his way back over to the till. He looked back over at a couple of elderly witches who were drinking glasses of sherry and smoking from long pipes, giving them a toothless grin as he joined in with their conversation. Her eyes drifted away from the bar as she ignored a couple of nagging doubts in her mind and glanced back down to her copy of the Daily Prophet. She never should have picked it up to read, not yet anyway. She had only intended to pass through the pub on the way to an appointment in Knockturn Alley before she met Harry, but when she had seen the headline, curiosity had got the better of her.

These days, eighteen-year-old Ginny Weasley thought that nothing shocked her anymore. Things made her upset and angry but they never seemed to shock her. Especially with the insiders' reports that she heard. Death Eaters were evil and clinical robots with no ounce of humanity within them. She had seen people killed in battle, had family and friends that had lost their lives, been tortured, watched hopelessly as others were tortured, and almost died on a dirty stone floor littered with bones as Tom Riddle emerged from a diary.

So, why had she been so affected by today's article in the damn newspaper?

Ginny knocked the glass of Fire Whiskey back so quickly that she felt the flames lighting up in her mouth and down her throat. It was almost like she would be able to breathe fire had she chosen to do so.

She had known Jessica Stevens, Jess or 'annoying busybody' Stevens (as she been known by), for seven years and shared a dormitory room with her while she had been at Hogwarts. They had shared the same friends and many an argument over anything and everything. Despite being the complete opposite of each other with their clashing personalities, they had spent a lot of time in each other's company. It was the kind of thing that often happened when you had the same friends as someone else.

Jessica was the typical type of girl from school that you loved to hate; she had both brains and beauty. Her long blond hair, sparkling blue eyes, and tall, thin figure made her look just like a Muggle Barbie doll. She was the kind of girl that all the boys fancied in a similar fashion to Cho Chang. As someone who would never dream of breaking a school rule, she was the a-typical Head Girl, with high marks and good behaviour. It was inevitable that she would clash with a Quidditch-loving trouble maker with red hair and freckles who had been placed in detention too many times to count and thought that rules were made to be broken. In fact, several times Jessica had never failed to miss the opportunity to personally give her a detention.

Yet none of that had mattered as war had started to rage and Hogsmeade came under attack for the first time in the June of their fifth year. Jessica had stood and bravely fought against oncoming Death Eaters, despite having the opportunity to run like many others had done. She had stayed with them and risked her life.

_"Ginny."_

_Upon hearing her name, fifteen-year-old Ginny Weasley stopped running in the middle of the street and spun around looking for who called it. "Yes?" she demanded in an annoyed tone, struggling to catch her breath._

_She looked straight at Jessica but hardly paid any attention. Why was the bloody prefect trying to stop her now? What rule had she broken by running through Hogsmeade? Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that he had gone missing and she had to find him. She couldn't let him risk his life and run into blind allies after Death Eaters, not without support._

_"He's not up there." The fifth year prefect replied in a sense of urgency in her voice and her face looked flustered from the day's events._

_"Who?" she asked, growing increasingly impatient; she was wasting so much time. "What are you going on about, who's not up there?"_

_"Harry Potter, it's who you're trying to find. Everyone knows it, Ginny, it's only a matter of time before you two get together. But that doesn't matter at the moment. There's nothing up there apart from a Death Eater's apparition point," Jessica explained as she kept firing jets of red and green sparks out of her wand, before turning back around the corner and behind the protection of the shop to relative safety. "It's not safe down there."_

_Ginny found herself glancing down the street before turning to look back at her classmate. "Are you okay, Jess?"_

_"I'll be fine." She replied panting slightly and holding onto a sign for support. "But I think they sent a Bonesplinter Curse at my leg, it feels like jelly."_

_Ginny winced despite herself; the Bonesplinter Curse was known to shatter the bones within your body. If it was aimed at the right areas, such as the rib cage, the curse could lead to a long and painful death as key organs were overloaded with so much weight, thus leading them to collapse._

_"Give me your hand," she said as she offered the prefect her left hand. "You can lean on me, you need to get back to the castle to have Madam Pomfrey fix your leg before the curse spreads. Trust me, I know it's better for her to fix these things as quickly as possible before it does any permanent damage. I know a shortcut back to the castle."_

_"Would this quick way back to Hogwarts be something that I should be reporting as a school prefect?"_

_"Other prefects I know have turned a blind eye to it," Ginny said as she let out a small smile. "And I'm guessing you wouldn't want to test out any of my big brother's new products."_

_"I think it's something I can overlook this once," Jessica replied as she leaned on her for support and they started to walk. "You were pretty good out there."_

_"It comes from having big brothers," she explained with a small shrug and held out her wand in front of her. "You weren't too bad either."_

_"Comes from books and studying. I can't be seen to let my family down; they have all become Head Boy or Head Girl at Hogwarts. It's quite a weight to carry on your shoulders."_

_"I get that, everyone expects so much from you. Me, Fred and George are the only Weasleys not to become prefects in the last century, much to mum's displeasure. But you can't let it all mess with your mind, you just need to do what you think is right," Ginny said as she pushed open the door to Honeydukes Sweetshop. "So we've got the same friends, the same pressures so we must be at least a little alike, which begs the question why can't we stand each other?"_

_"Well, I wouldn't say we can't stand each other, it's more that we don't get on really. I mean we are both a-typical Gryffindors and get good grades, god knows how you manage to get yours though. So I guess we're far too similar in all the wrong aspects and the complete opposite in the right aspects. It's not a good combination," she said honestly. "Plus you left some itching powder in my bed last week."_

_She straightened her face as she adopted the look that got her out of some many rough points in the past with a smile of pure sweet innocence. "I deny all knowledge."_

_"I thought you would." _

It was a day that had started to change her view of Jessica Stevens and the two of them had grown a mutual (if sometimes grudging) respect for each other. They were both Gryffindors for a reason and fighting against the Dark Wizards of the world, putting their lives on the line. They were more alike than either of them would ever admit, except in private to themselves. With a war going on, differences over bewitched pieces of homework and pillowcases, boyfriends, and trailing mud through the dormitory after Quidditch practices seemed to have lost any importance. They had all been forced to grow up so quickly, losing part of their childhood and teenage years to death and destruction.

They had all helped each other as almost every student in the school lost friends and family to Riddle. It created a strong spirit that had bound them together. She would never forget the way the girls in her dormitory, including Jess, had gathered around and supported her when the news of Charlie's death had reached her on that cold sunny November day during her seventh year. They had kept her sane and stopped her from breaking down, reminding her of what they were fighting for until she had managed to take a Portkey back to The Burrow. They had helped her when she had returned to school; tired, exhausted and emotionally drained. Her mother had insisted that she was not ready for the war and she just wanted her to stay safe and finish her NEWTs.

Jessica Stevens may be a 'goody-goody' and a school 'swot' with all of her homework done as soon as she got it, but she was also brave and loyal … the kind of girl you wanted on your side in a fight. She had become a strange type of friend. Not one that you would spend hours talking to or someone you would keep in contact with regularly. In fact, Ginny used to avoid her unless she was in a group of mutual friends, but she was a friend who was always there when you needed her. A friend that you never realised how important she was until it was too late.

But then when Jess had needed people to help her, no one had been there. She had been alone when she had needed people around her. Left alone and terrified, being tortured in unthinkable ways as she stood up for equality in the Wizarding world, when others should have been able to help her. Surely she was too young for all this? She was Ginny's age and after all, they had only left Hogwarts three short months ago.

Maybe her mother was right about the war and teenagers.

Only ninety days ago, despite the occasional risk, they were protected. Albus Dumbledore would never let any of his students be harmed in any way; so all they had to do, as they were constantly reminded, was to stay on the Hogwarts grounds. Riddle was still afraid of facing the Hogwarts Headmaster so as long as they obeyed school rules they were as safe as they could be.

Yet now all that had changed and they were not in school anymore. They were now in danger everyday and as Mad-Eye Moody kept reminding them they needed "CONSTANT VIGILANCE". Yet none of that helped her with knowing what to do now. She should go and see her old school classmate or at the very least send her an owl.

But what did you say?

'I'm thinking of you' just did not seem like enough.

Harry Potter splashed some freezing cold water over his face to wake himself up and jolt his senses into gear. He smiled as he took his glasses off the side and looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Gone was the scrawny boy who was forced to wear Dudley's hand-me-downs that were at least six sizes too big. Instead, in its place was a nineteen-year-old wizard that was growing in power everyday and would one day soon be able to destroy Voldemort, ending this war. Power that came from love, the loving and being loved by the most amazing witch that lived in the world.

It was Saturday and he probably should have got up earlier to make sure that everything was in order for today. But it all should work out fine. After all, he had spent hours going through plans with Mrs Weasley yesterday, when he had collected the perfect finishing touch to his plans, a ring that had been passed through the Weasley family from generation to generation starting with Godric Gryffindor.

Besides, like the witch he loved, he enjoyed his Saturday and Sunday morning lie-ins. That was until the noisy shop below his flat had woke him up with loud crashes, bangs and explosions. Unfortunately, it was what tended to happen on a regular basis when you lived at 93 Diagon Alley, with your co-founders of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes working below you. Ginny often insisted that they were lucky that they had chosen to protect her honour or at least come up those stairs more often. He had had chosen to respectfully disagree, being caught with the younger sister of the Weasley brothers in a compromising situation once was too often for him.

He poured water over his black hair in an attempt to straighten it, but as soon as he ran a comb through it the familiar tuff of hair flicked upwards. He cursed it silently; he was trying to make a good impression today and do everything how it should be done, wanting Ginny to see him at his best. But then again that was not the Harry Potter that she knew and he would not be himself with neat controllable hair. It would be like Ginny without her freckles.

Harry collected a small box from under his pillow and placed it carefully in his trouser pocket. He had promised Mrs Weasley that he would keep it safe until it was where it belonged. He smiled as he looked around his bedroom; he had had some of the best memories of his life in here with Miss Weasley. But if everything went right today he would be looking for a new bedroom in a new flat. Ginny deserved the very best and that did not mean a flat in which her older brothers could appear in a second without any advanced warning.

His heart jumped as he felt the small red and gold velvet box in his right trouser pocket as it rested against his leg. Today was the day that his whole life was going to change in one way or another. He was not going to let Voldemort stop him from living his life and tonight at the Weasley family dinner he expected to be the happiest man alive. Whatever was set to happen in half an hour's time was going to make this a day that he would always remember.

He grabbed his cloak off the chair he had flung it over last night; he was lucky that the woman of his dreams was not a 'neat freak'. Unlike Ron, he did not have to make sure that everything was in the right place before he left a room. He could leave things where he wanted and as long as he knew where the important things were, he was happy. And at the moment, the most important person in his life was waiting for him and he needed to get going before he was late.

Harry smiled as he picked up his wand and placed it in his inside cloak pocket; with Voldemort still around he liked to have his wand in arms reach at all times. Despite the fact that it was highly unlikely for Voldemort to jump out from a side alley to attack him, he liked to feel safe with it. The risk just was not worth taking and there was no way that he was going to place the people who he loved at risk. He had lost too many of the people he loved already to Dark Wizards and he was not going to lose anyone else. If there was one thing that he had learned, it was that life was short and he should cherish every moment of it.

He Disapparated from the living room of his flat and reappeared in the Leaky Cauldron by the large open fire, mere seconds later. His eyes searched through the multicoloured smoke hanging in the air for a glint of bright red hair amongst the dark backdrop of the crowd of people in the busy pub. That was the thing about dating a redhead, there were so few people with that colour hair which meant that you could always find them in a crowd without putting too much effort into it.

She had her head bent down over a copy of one of the Wizarding newspapers or magazines and an empty glass beside it on the round table. She seemed isolated in her own little world and completely oblivious to what was going on around her as she stared down at the paper. But then that was Ginny Weasley for you, when she gave her full attention to something it was hard to shift it; she had inherited all the typical Weasley stubbornness.

He quickly made his way through the crowd to the corner where she sat. He knew how to get her attention better than most. A quick, sharp and playful trick or prank always worked wonders and it was a tactic that Ginny had not been opposed to using herself. He carefully held his breath in as he tried not to make any noise and placed his hands over her eyes.

Ginny let out a small gasp into the air as her right hand jumped towards her pocket and knocked over the glass in front of her. Within milliseconds she had pulled out her wand and had jabbed against his chest as if she was ready to curse him. Quick reactions almost like when she had been on the Quidditch pitch.

Harry looked at her slightly bemused for a second. It was not the best idea to sneak up behind her but she normally was okay with it. What had made her so jumpy today?

"Hey!" he said as he held up his hands and studied her face. It looked very pale, almost as if she had been crying. "It's just me, you know, Harry? Actually, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Harry," she breathed as she regained her composure, keeping her wand held high and playfully punching his arm. "Don't you dare do that again!"

Harry moved his hand forward to move her hair out of her eyes. "What's happened?"

"You've just sneaked up on me," she said, a smile creeping to the corner of her mouth as she kept her wand raised. "You could scare a girl to death like that, Potter."

"Like you've never sneaked up on me, Weasley," he replied in a mock-serious tone, unable to hide his grin. "Come on, Weasley, put your wand down, it looks like you are about to poke me in the eye."

"I wouldn't poke you in the eye, not that you don't deserve it," Ginny said as she adopted an innocent tone to her voice and straightened her face. "It would be highly impractical due to the fact you wear glasses. But then I could always find other areas."

Harry smiled as Ginny's mischievous grin finally appeared and he took her hands into his. Dropping his voice he whispered, "I don't think that you should be saying that kind of thing in public, Miss Weasley."

"Well," she whispered as she raised her eyebrows, stroking his face with her right hand, "I think you should stick to your promise and take me somewhere else, Mr Potter. Maybe somewhere more private where I can hold my wand where I want."

"And what would your mother say if she could hear you now and see that twinkle in your eye?"

Ginny got to her feet and let her hand fall into his. "Well I'm a strong believer in the statement what my mother does not know can't hurt me."

He squeezed her hand, "You mean her, don't you?"

"No, I meant me," she said as she cast her eyes around the round almost as if she was looking for Mrs Weasley. "Come on, Harry, you've met my mum and seen her in a shouting fit."

Harry let out a small laugh; he loved her sense of humour and mischief. The way she had a twinkle in her eye or the corners of her lips curled as she was trying to hide a smile. And most importantly the way her hand felt in his, it was a perfect fit as her petite wrist slipped naturally with his. They were perfect for each other and no one was going to come between that.

"I love you, Gin."

"I love you too, Harry."

He tipped her face upwards and moved closer letting his lips meet with hers. She stood on her tiptoes, placing her left hand on the side of his face and keeping her right hand in his. He felt a tremble run down his back as their tongues touched and the initial brief kiss was deepened. Her tongue massaged his and he ran his right hand down her back resting it just below her waist.

Slowly he pulled away. "So are you going to tell me what has upset you so much today?"

"It's just the Prophet, Death Eaters and this bloody war. I don't want to think or talk about it. I'm sick of being strong and seeing people I care about being hurt. I just want to be me and spend some time with the man I love … forget it all for a day before we are dragged back to the reality of it all," she told him as she kept her hand in his and they made their way passed the bar and into a small walled court yard that contained only an old battered tin dustbin and a couple of weeds in the corner. "And we need to get going if we're going to get some lunch before I have that appointment."

Harry found himself frowning slightly, he knew that he would never know everything about Ginny Weasley; she kept far too many things close to her heart. But he just wanted to know about the only thing that Ginny had kept quiet about since she had left Hogwarts and her mysterious appointments.

She would have whispered conversations with her twin brothers then tell him not to worry and disappear for hours coming back holding a paper bag that Fred or George would quickly hide in their store room. She refused to say where she had got the items for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products and seemed to becoming more ambitious in the objects she brought back. When anyone questioned her activities, she stated that she should not be treated differently just because she was a girl and she did not need mollycoddling or protecting.

"Are you going to tell me what you are doing or even where you are going?"

"I'll tell you when I get back," Ginny explained in a similar fashion as she raised her wand, yet Harry knew she never seemed to do so. She tapped her wand against the wall three times and smiled broadly as the wall parted. "You'll only worry and besides, I know how to take care of myself. Especially when I don't have you, Ron or Hermione putting me in danger."

Harry watched for a second; it always seemed to amaze him as the small hole appeared and the bricks wriggled apart and how the whole of his world was hidden. He smiled as he looked from the young redhead next to him back to the hole that was growing wider and into a huge archway. This was where they belonged. He felt Ginny squeeze his hand as together they stepped into a cobbled street and one of his favourite places in the world.

"I resent that," he muttered as he watched her raise her eyebrows. "Okay, maybe it's a little true, but you're still a target, Gin, and I want you to promise me that you will look after yourself."

"I always do, if only due to the fact that now I have you in my life. You are not going to get rid of me that easily."

"But the article in the Daily Prophet?"

"I'll admit I might have been a little shaken but we can't live our lives in fear of what might happen, that's just what Riddle wants and I'm not going to make him happy. Just imagine the look on that cold, evil face as he sees us enjoying our lives and sticking two fingers up at him," she smiled as she spoke softly and continued to walk through the bustling street, unwilling to remove her hand from his. "We deserve some fun, don't you think? So where do you want to go?"

"I think you're right as always."

"I love it when you say that."

"How about the Kirke's restaurant just past Ollivander's?"

"My, my Mr Potter," she said as she squeezed his hand softly again. "Are you going to wine and dine me?"

Harry placed his right hand into his pocket and felt it settle around the box containing Godric Gryffindor's ring. "That was the general idea."

"You know you don't need to do that, I don't need any of that," Ginny told him as she kissed his cheek again. "I'd be happy at Florean Fortescues's Ice Cream Parlour as long as I'm with you."

"I thought you just said a minute ago that you didn't need anyone and I just put you in danger."

"Well, I think I can put up with that," she whispered so only he could hear her. "You see I've got this small problem called my heart and it loves you and that means I want to spend all the time that I can humanly possible with you."

Harry smiled. "I know how that feels. It feels like you don't want to wait any longer and as you said, why shouldn't we be allowed a little fun and romance just because we are in the middle of a war? My life would be empty without you in it, Gin."

He knew people were watching them as he stopped next to Quality Quidditch Supplies and Ginny sent him a quizzical look, but he did not care. People always watched them together, he was famous and Ginny was so recognisable with flaming red hair and from one of Britain's most prominent Wizarding families. This was not how he had planned to do this, not in the middle of a street, but somehow it just felt like the right thing and the perfect time.

Harry gently fell to his knees and pushed one leg upward, looking like he was about to be knighted Sir Harry Potter. He felt the box in his hand and carefully got it from his pocket. Mrs Weasley had explained the history behind the ring last night. When Godric Gryffindor had commissioned his sword over a thousand years ago he had asked for a ring to be made as well. The ring contained a small red ruby that blazed in the firelight similar to the ones that adorned the sword in Albus Dumbledore's office at Hogwarts. The gold ring had been passed from generation to generation for each female born Weasley to wear on her engagement. And now, hopefully it was Ginny's turn to wear the ring.

"What are you doing, Harry?" she hissed. "Come on, Harry, stop messing around and get to your feet."

He opened the box and watched as Ginny's eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly. "I have something to ask you first."

"Harry," she breathed, "that's-"

"I know what it is," he said calmly as he took her left hand.

"Ginny Weasley, will you marry me?"


	3. Chapter Two

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Two: Curiosity Killed the Lioness

A/N: 'Nostrum diligo mos non exsisto infractus' is the Latin for 'our love can never be broken.' Or at least that's what the English to Latin site said.

Ginny looked at the old engagement ring, its deep, red ruby flared like a firelight against the background of its velvet box. It was different to most other engagement rings with the choice of stone being a ruby instead of a diamond, but it was steeped in history. She had only seen the family heirloom once before and had never been allowed to touch it; the ring was far too old and precious for the sweet and dirt stained fingers of an eight-year-old girl. It had remained in the family vault in the lower levels of Gringotts since the death of the last female born Weasley nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

She first remembered hearing her mother tell the story of the family ring when she was just six-years-old. It had led to a great deal of suppressed envy and jealously from her older brothers as little Ginny was going to get something very precious and valuable. Her mum had said that she would one day wear the ring because she was more precious and important than anyone could imagine. She had been told that once she met her Prince Charming, the man of her dreams, the fiery ring would settle on the ring finger of her left hand for the rest of her life.

Yet Godric Gryffindor's ring had disappeared from her thoughts as she had grown up in a house full of boys. Thinking about a thousand-year-old ring that she was not allowed to touch was not really that interesting and could not keep her imagination captive. Dreams of what the ring represented paled in comparison to breaking into the family broom shed to 'borrow' one of her brothers' broomsticks and go flying, or playing with frogspawn and accidentally leaving it in Percy's bed on Fred's encouragement, or just a good fight with Ron which often leading to him breaking or bruising one or several of her bones.

Dreaming of getting married didn't help you understand Quidditch tactics, it didn't help you imitate George, or even hold the same incentives as a comic book; it was just the 'girly' thing to think about. Growing up with six big brothers, the last thing she wanted to be was 'girly'. She had always been willing to fight anyone and speak up her herself, earning a reputation as a 'chatter-box'. She had always been keen to prove herself and show that she could do anything that her brothers could. The last thing she wanted was to be ignored, under-estimated and treated as just the 'Weasley girl'. And nothing had ever really changed.

A glint from the ring as it sparkled in the light from the sun caught her eye. Reality started to flood through her body and bring her out of her thoughts. Her heart jumped as she felt Harry's hand touching hers and she looked into his bright green eyes. Harry had just asked her to marry him and she needed to stop thinking about the history of the damn ring and give him an answer.

Her mind was exploding; it was full of questions for which she wanted answers. How had Harry got hold of that ring? As a family treasure, it had to have been given to him by someone with access to the vault and the story. Harry must have been planning this for a while. Had he proposed to her mother first? She could just see her mother's gushing face as her dreams came true as Harry had revealed his plans; he would finally officially become her seventh son. And all this should have made Ginny's answer very straightforward.

But then why had she not screamed out 'yes' at the top of her voice as soon as the words had left his mouth? Why had she left the love of her life kneeling on the floor for the last couple of minutes while she doubted her answer?

Was she even ready to get married? She was a teenager that had just left school and, despite several job offers at the Ministry of Magic, she was unsure with what to do with her life. Instead she had spent the last three months working for her older brothers to provide herself with a bit of money while she decided what to do with her life. She could hardly offer Harry anything.

And could they even get married? They were in the middle of a war and a wedding was not even remotely practical.

Yet again, when had love ever been practical?

"Gin, are you okay?"

She felt her head nod automatically, even though she did not feel anywhere near the region of being okay. "I'm thinking."

Harry smiled as he looked into her eyes, and a lump had risen in her throat.

"So are you going to tell me what's going on in that mind of yours?"

She allowed herself to smile slightly; now that was a very good question and one that did not really have an answer. She never could be a hundred percent clear about what was going on in her mind at any one moment. Almost every witch in the country would have been doing cartwheels upon being asked to marry the famous Harry Potter. So why wasn't she?

There was no question in her mind about her love for Harry. She had lost her heart to him as an eleven-year-old and over the last two years it had grown impossible to imagine life without him. She had always thought that when, and if she got married to him, it would be when the war was over and she had her life in order. But then again, the war was showing no signs of drawing to a close anytime soon and Riddle's first control of power had gone on for over a decade. Who was to say that would not happen again?

"Nothing that important, just a mess of thoughts. You should know that by now," she said as she felt him squeeze her hand and did her best to flash him a smile. "Okay, well, it's just, I want to say yes, I really do."

His smile dropped. "But?"

"But, I'm just not sure if we can even do this now. Wouldn't it just end up becoming a huge risk for people to attend a wedding? It would be a perfect target for an attack on the famous Harry Potter's wedding day. And it's not just that. I mean, is it even right to be this happy when people are dying every week?"

"Is that all?" Harry had regained his smile as he got to his feet and still kept holding her hand in his. She loved that smile; it made such a difference to his face as his muscles would relax and even his eyes would twinkle. "Of course it's okay; why should we wait for years if this is what we both want? God knows what could happen in those years. Why can't we be happy?"

She bowed her head slightly and whispered, "Charlie."

"I promise you, Gin, I will never forget Sirius, Remus, Hagrid or Charlie; they will always be part of me," he explained as he tipped her face to meet his. "But the last thing they would have wanted was for us to wait because of Voldemort and a bloody war; remember what they fought for. Besides, when have you ever been opposed to the odd risk? I thought that you said they made life worth living."

She looked at him, trying to read the emotions on his face. His smile had grown as if he had a renewed confidence of her response. Maybe Harry was right; maybe they could get married, if that's what they wanted to do. Why should they let Riddle stop any happiness that they wanted to enjoy?

Her mind wandered as, for the first time in her life, she saw an image of herself in white Wizarding robes, her hair twisted into an elegant knot at the back of her head, standing as her friends and family would watch Harry gently slip a ring onto her finger. She would raise her wand, a jet of scarlet and gold would connect her wand and her heart to Harry as she would utter the words _'nostrum diligo mos non_ _exsisto infractus'_.

She felt a smile curl her lips as her heart seemed to grow. Maybe she wanted this more than she realised. Traditional and romantic to the very core, she wanted to let herself be swept off her feet and into Harry's arms, letting her guard down as she let someone into her heart.

Her heart was something that she had protected since her first year, and she put up shields against others getting close to it. She was not going to let people get hurt because of her again. It may be ruthless and callous— Tom used to say it was the Slytherin he had implanted in her— but she needed to stay in control of things and not lose command of her heart or mind. If she was going to kiss someone she knew where it was going to end, or if she was going to say something she knew exactly what she was going to say. But that had all just changed.

"I'm not scared or opposed to taking any kind of risk, I just like to keep a healthy protective guard at times," she said, almost as much to herself as an answer to his question. "It was just that this is something that I've never thought about before."

"And now that you have thought about it?"

She felt her heart flutter as she cleared all the thoughts from her mind. Just for once she was going to go with her gut reaction and not talk herself out of something she wanted because of the nagging doubts that Riddle had imposed in her mind. She was not going to say something that she would end up regretting for the rest of her life. She loved him and could not imagine anyone else that she wanted to spend her life with.

"Yes," she whispered so quietly that her voice was almost lost into the air.

"Yes?"

"Yes, Mr Potter," Ginny said again, in a more confident tone that sounded much more like her usual voice as her smile grew, "I will marry you."

Harry looked at her and his green eyes met her brown ones. There was a slight element of doubt in his voice as he spoke. "Really?"

"Yes, really," she replied as she leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips. Her face flushed as she pulled away and her smile grew and extended to her whole body. "I would love to see you become Mr Weasley."

He pulled her tightly towards him and she found herself letting out a little squeal as he kept her strong arms wrapped around her. "Don't you mean you becoming Mrs Potter?"

"We'll see."

"Yes we will, Mrs Potter," Harry said as he released her and took her hand in one smooth movement. He carefully slipped the old ruby ring onto her left hand. "It looks like it's always belonged there."

Harry pushed open the door to the shop at 93 Diagon Alley, and was greeted by a large explosion of chatter, laughter and the odd bang. The small joke shop was humming with customers like it often did on a Saturday, a young man in his early twenties with quite long, shoulder length, shaggy red hair was serving a couple of teenage boys. He slipped three Skiving Snackboxes boxes and a Bed Bug's Friend into a white plastic bag. Harry had never for a moment regretted giving them his Triwizard winnings from his fourth year.

The jokes, laughs and smiles provided by Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes had helped to raise spirit and moral, helping in the war. There were pages of deaths that were listed in the Daily Prophet every week. They needed some fun every now and again, especially in a time when laughs were so few and far between.

However, today, he did not need jokes and tricks to lift his moral; Ginny had just provided him with the most amazing natural high. When she had agreed to marry him he felt like he was walking on air as his heart pounded against his chest. He had a grin on his face that he could not shift even if he wanted to, making him look like the 'Cheshire cat' in that Muggle story. He had been smiling so long that his jaw was now aching, but he couldn't care one little bit.

Ginny was the most amazing witch he had ever had the pleasure to meet and he could hardly believe that it had taken so long to notice. She was talented and could perform any spell you needed within a couple of seconds. She was determined and stubborn, whether it was because she was focusing on the goal in the middle of a Quidditch match or not caring about her appearance as she fought in the middle of a battle. That was just the kind of thing that made her as beautiful on the inside as she was on outside, even if she refused to accept that statement. She had an incredible sense of humour, a natural wit and a good sense of mischief.

No wonder her twin brothers had snapped her up to work for them when she became unsure of what to do after leaving school. Working for Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes was something that had not been offered to anyone else but himself, Ginny and Lee Jordan. She was their natural ally and had just agreed to become his wife.

"Harry!" George bounded towards him before pausing as he bent into a mock bow. "It's good to see you Mr Potter."

It had taken him years to be able to tell Fred and George apart, but he was slowly getting there. The differences were there even if they were small, subtle ones and took years of getting to really know the Weasley twins over long periods of time.

George had a mole where his left shoulder meet his neck while Fred had slightly more freckles. Fred was slightly more reckless; he lived for the hour whereas George lived for the day. They were not the kind of differences that you could notice from a distance, but he had learnt to tell them apart about ninety percent of the time, simply because of his position as almost a seventh son in the Weasley family. Even their own siblings sometimes confused the pair.

"Hi," Harry said, failing to control his laughter as he gestured to the shop with his right hand. "Business is going well today, I see."

"Excellent," George replied with a jovial grin. "Hey, Fred, come over here, it's our financial backer."

"Harry," Fred said as he made his way over towards them, waving his wand at the till so that a large steel padlock emerged on it. He straightened up and adopted a fatherly tone, "How are you today, son?"

"I'm great, actually."

"I wonder why?" Fred stated in a mocking fashion as he glanced over to his twin brother and let out a large sigh. "Now, now, George, I think that Harry here may have been corrupting our innocent little sister."

"Now, Fred, be reasonable, I'm sure it is the other way around," George said as he kept his face straight. "We all know that our young Ginny is cunning."

"Shrewd."

"Astute."

"Devious."

"Mischievous."

"Free willed."

"And as devastatingly good looking as her older twin brothers."

"Quite true."

"In fact, it is our Harry's honour here that we should be worried about," Fred explained as Harry felt the redhead clap his hand onto his shoulder and shake his head. "Any hope for her is long gone."

George nodded solemnly. "And just imagine our dear sweet mother's face if young Harry, her favourite child, had been corrupted by a girl. Just dreadful."

"Terrible."

"Shocking."

"You've not got to worry anymore," Harry explained, interrupting the twins in mid flow as he kept a large grin on his face and fought back a laugh. "She said yes."

It felt even better to tell people that he was engaged than to keep reliving the moment Ginny said yes over and over again in his head. He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs that Ginny Weasley had agreed to marry him to the entire world, starting with this shop. He was the luckiest and happiest man alive. And he could have sworn that he had seen Fred and George share a genuine smile, as if they were pleased about the outcome of the day and their baby sister accepting his proposal.

George moved his right hand to his eyes wiping away invisible tears. "Well as I've always said, Harry has always been a Weasley, just without the incredible good looks and charm, but now it's official."

"Couldn't agree more, my friend, but," Fred said, before pausing as if for effect and copying his mother's tone of voice, "Mum is going to unbearable. 'Harry and my little Ginny getting married. I'm just so happy, I feel like I'm going to burst.'"

"Anyway," Harry interrupted them again before they could start a new set of jokes and one-liners, "I came to ask you a question."

As much as he enjoyed the twins' jokes, he was getting more and more curious about Ginny's frequent disappearing acts into Knockturn Alley. The street just was not safe anymore; not that it had ever really been that safe in the interwar years.

It was well known that Death Eaters went to Knockturn Alley to find products of a more noteworthy type, such as cursed objects and unicorn blood. These were hardly the type of things that could be found in the shops of the neighbouring street of Diagon Alley. Death Eaters walked around freely and openly in their robes and masks; there were often raids by Aurors on the street after dark. Any witch or wizard that walked down the street was advised to leave straight away unless they followed the dark arts. Failing that, they were advised to at least keep their eyes wide open and alert, with your hand on your wand at all times, just in case.

It was not a street that he or any of her family wanted Ginny to walk on, and Ron had given her repetitive warnings about her safety, even directly telling her to stay well clear. Although, as with the result of most of the heated conversations that the two youngest members of the Weasleys shared, these discussions would go in the same fashion to all the others. Ron would tell Ginny to do or not to do something and Ginny would take the exact opposite actions.

He loved that about her. She was determined, free willed and stubborn and he was not going to stop her entering that alley. And if you changed that about her, well she would not be the woman that he loved.

"We are at your service."

"What kind of work is Ginny doing for you?"

"Now, Harry, that would be telling."

"But needless to say, the products of a more, more—"

"Sensitive."

"Yes, sensitive, thank you, Fred… sensitive nature, have been easier to come by in the last three months," George explained with a slight grin. "You see, Harry. If you suggest to young Miss Weasley that something is beyond her capabilities or too dangerous for her, she'll go out of her way to prove herself to you."

"Weasley stubbornness."

"Such a terrible thing."

Harry looked at them for a couple of seconds almost in disbelief. Fred and George were far from stupid and naïve, yet they were almost challenging their sister every single week to enter that dangerous alley. Despite all their practical jokes and pranks, they were first and foremost members of the Weasley family who loved their parents and siblings deeply, even Percy.

Percy had been brought back into the Weasley fold after the incident at the Department of Mysteries in Harry's fifth year and the fall out with Ministry of Magic. Molly Weasley had welcomed her third-born son back with her arms wide open. However, the rest of the family seemed not to have forgotten his actions; Fred and George failed to forgive him despite all their mother's pleas, while Ron and Ginny had reserved judgement. Yet when Percy had been injured the other week, every Weasley had been at his bedside in minutes. The two brothers, like the rest had their family, had shown how much they cared.

So why would they take any possible risk with their younger sister?

"But what if she gets hurt?"

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Fred stated shaking his head slightly from side to side, "we would never send Ginny anywhere that she could get hurt, she has Ron for that."

"We only let her meet some of our more interesting suppliers, she can Apparate in and out within five minutes."

"Besides, Ginny can take care of herself," Fred explained as he rubbed the back of his neck, "as we have found out several times to our cost."

Harry grinned. "What happened?"

"Well," George said, picking up the story from his twin brother, "after two weeks of working for us, she stormed into the middle of the shop, hair flaring and wand out and accused us of babying her."

"As you can guess, that's not a thing that our darling little sister took too well for some reason."

"So to prove her worth and a point at the same time, she hexed us in the middle of our own shop, leaving us with baby dragon wings sprouting from our back, much to our costumers amusement, and refused to remove them until mum made her."

"Trust us, Harry, you have no need to worry about Ginny."

Knockturn Alley was always dark, hostile and unwelcoming. It gave anyone who entered it a chilling, uneasy feeling of being watched, which you probably were. It was a dingy dank alleyway devoted to the Dark Arts. The shops were filled with materials that could aid the Dark Arts, such as poisons, and witches and wizards wandered up and down with trays.

To enter the street though, she had found it just to be a matter of keeping your nerve and showing an air of confidence, even when you did not feel remotely confident. The grubby and sultry street had a similar atmosphere to her nightmares and the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts. But that was part of being a Gryffindor, having a sense of bravery about you, no matter what the situation was. Death Eaters went for easy targets so if you looked scared you were likely to become a victim, all you had to do was look confident and be alert.

A trip down Knockturn Alley was hardly that challenging, as long as you kept your wits about you. And she was not going to let herself become a victim again. In fact, it was a walk in the park when you used Fred and George's contacts that had been handpicked especially for her. It was becoming predictable if not boring as you were in and out of the street in a couple of minutes with no time or need to explore the rest of the street. Well, that was until the old hag she visited three weeks ago said something that sent a chill through her whole body. From that day on, she had vowed never to go back and see her again.

_"Ah, young Ginny," an old familiar voice croaked from the darkest corner of a damp room. "Such a pretty young thing."_

_Ginny raised her eyebrows slightly and resisted letting out a yawn at the customary pattern of the conversation that she was becoming increasingly bored and tired with. The hag really needed to try to get on with her own life instead of failing to scare her every week. The days when she had offered concern and spent times talking to the old woman were long gone. And in her opinion the hag had brought it on herself with her 'old wives tales'._

_She squinted into the dark. "Have you got the package?"_

_"Always in a hurry, the young, never taking the time to stay and chat to a lonely old woman… or even look over their shoulder and see who's watching them. Do you think that you are untouchable?"_

_"I've got your gold," she said as she tried to continue with the transaction and held onto her wand tightly with her right hand. Slowly, as the old hag emerged from the darkness Ginny raised her left hand to show the bag of twelve gallons, "And I'm in a bit of a hurry."_

_"I don't see why a young thing like you, who's not involved with them lot, needs a thing like hags skin. Do you fancy telling me dear?"_

_"Not really." Ginny felt her body tense but offered only a small shrug as she kept her face straight and emotionless. "It's not really that important."_

_"If you say so, dear, I was just wondering why some hag skin that is not 'really that important' was worth the risk of coming here."_

_"There's no risk."_

_"There is always a risk, especially for a pretty young girl with deluded ideas like yourself," the hag replied as she took the bag of gold out of her hand and kept her eyes on the redhead, yellowing eyes interlocking with brown. Taking hold of Ginny's wrist, the hag muttered, "You hear and see things in this alley, especially when no one thinks that you are listening. I just thought that I should pass on some of the rumours and, of course, the signs."_

_Ginny quickly pulled her hand away, grabbing the paper bag of hag skin. "I don't believe in rumours and I believe even less in signs."_

_"That's very lucky, girl, very lucky indeed. Especially with what the sky has to say about you and the rumours connected to your name."_

_She could not help herself as a mixture of growing up in the Wizarding world, knowing of prophecies and natural curiosity seemed to get the better of her. "What do you know about me?"_

_"I thought that you were a non-believer, young Ginny?"_

_"Just tell me," she growled softly as she found herself raising her wand to the hag's plump chest._

_"Put that down, girl, or I won't tell you a thing," the hoarse voice replied. The old woman waited until the wand had been lowered before continuing. "People are watching you, people are interested in you, and you walk around without a care in the world. These are dangerous times for a young girl that would be so useful."_

_"You've got the wrong witch," Ginny scoffed. Then she Disapparated. _

That had been twenty-three days ago and, despite her disbelief in anything that a hag living on Knockturn Alley had to say, especially that one, she was wary. You did not grow up in the Wizarding world without learning some level of respect for what the stars said. While she had learned that listening to rumours provided useful if not always accurate information, it was better to listen to them with a pinch of salt rather than ignoring them.

Her heart was pounding against her chest, almost as if it was going to burst out from her ribcage, instead of the familiar flutter that Knockturn Alley normally brought. Her head was turning within a split second in varying directions as she heard little noises and became slightly paranoid of the people walking behind her and watching her. And she had stopped using the old hag as a supplier, instead choosing to look elsewhere to prove herself. She did not need more people in her head saying that kind of rubbish.

She just needed to stay calm, composed and confident, and then it would be okay. It was nothing to walk through this alley, just like she had done at least a dozen times before. She was just here to prove that she could do this job, and that she could do it well without help and becoming a quivering wreck. She did not listen to rumours spread by old bitter hags. Besides, the more she explored the alley, the cheaper things became as she walked further down the streets. And there was no risk anyway; she was not Harry Potter, a key member of the Order of the Phoenix or a Ministry of Magic employee.

She was nothing special.

Her heart rushed as she found her fingers on her right hand twirled the ruby engagement ring. It was like being filled with chocolate as she felt a warm feeling fill her body as she touched Godric Gryffindor's ring. It seemed to increase her confidence as she pictured Harry's face and his belief in her. Slowly a smile started to emerge. She just needed to keep her head up high and show no fear or doubts and she would be back with him.

"Miss Weasley."

Ginny turned trying to look for who could be calling her name as her insides started to cool. No one on this street knew her name… well, at least not her surname. She was very careful when people asked her that question and choose either to avoid giving an answer or, when pushed, just said Ginny. No one in their right mind would give their full name to a stranger in Knockturn Alley.

"Miss Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Miss Ginevra Weasley."

The hushed voice was carrying through the still air and coming from a dark side alley. Who the hell was calling her? She titled her head slightly onto her right shoulder raised her wand and strained her eyes as she tried to work out who was calling her name. Who knew who she was here? And why would anyone call out her name?

There was a dark figure, whose outline she could hardly make out, with bright blue eyes at the end of the street. The sensible thing would be to walk away. But then there was never any fun gained from doing the sensible thing. Besides, there would be a series of nagging questions that stuck in her head if she turned away and went back to the relative safety of number 93, Diagon Alley. Surely, it could not hurt to take a little look and settle her curiosity?

"Hello," she called in a loud whisper.

As she heard a shuffling noise, she kept her wand raised to chest height and tightened her grip on it. Slowly, she took a couple of steps forward as she kept within a large stride away from the main part of Knockturn Alley. She took a large gulp as she looked over her shoulder, trying to make out anyone passing on the main street. Letting out a long breath, she turned her head back and walked further down the side street.

A shiver ran down her spine as she felt the area surrounding her darken.

"_Lumos_," she whispered as a beam of gold light shot out of the end of her wand and sent a bright glow down the street.

Scanning her eyes around the side street, she located a shape slumped next to the wall in the enclosed area. It was either a scrawny young man or a somewhat heavier woman with long blond hair. You just could not tell anything more while keeping a safe distance. She would have to move closer to be able to tell who was under the black cloak.

_This is a trap, this is a trap, _she whispered to herself as she edged closer. She need to leave right now and ignored the whimper of the person on the floor, but something was keeping her there. Some part of her was drawing her closer to the figure and stopping her from making the rational decision and Apparating out of the street.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she subconsciously loosened her grip around her wand. "Are you hurt? Do you need me to go and get some help?"

"No, stay, you help me."

"I can't stay, I'm running late to meeting someone," Ginny said, in a would-be confident voice; something about this just did not seem right. So why was she not listening to years of her father's advice and just leaving now? "It will only take me a second to get someone to come back and help you, and you'll be better off with someone more qualified than me. I'll just Apparate to my older brothers' shop, it won't take long, I swear."

"You can't, the wards are up, that's why I'm still here."

"Bloody hell, not again," she muttered as she helplessly looked up at the sky. Wards were put on the streets every now and again as the Ministry of Magic tried to catch Death Eaters. Which meant that she had to leave this alley straight away or risk taking part in the oncoming riots. "Don't worry, I'll run, I'll send someone back to you in a minute."

"I don't think so, Miss Weasley," a cold voice said from behind her and sent a sense of dread down her spine, "you're not going anywhere. _Stupefy_!'


	4. Chapter Three

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Three: Malfoy Hospitality

Ginny's body ached: her head was pounding and her face was bleeding with cuts that had been opened across her checks as she was dragged along immaculate and spotless floors, now dirtied by her blood. Her red hair, that normally fell softly out of her ponytail to framed her face, had crusted from being coated in a mixture of mud and blood. She could feel bruises emerging all over her body. Her hands and feet were bound tightly together and she could feel her heart pounding as purple blemishes had already begun to emerge. The colour of her shirt had changed from white to a mucky red and brown.

The first thing she remembered from her dazed memory of events was waking up to find herself immobilized by _Petrificus Totalis_. But as the effects of the temporary spell quickly wore off, the Death Eaters found it easier to bind her feet and hands with ropes instead of performing the spell ever twenty minutes. Then a jerk behind her navel had sent her constricted bodycrashing onto a cold marble floor.

Someone grabbed her arms and pulled them over her head. Struggling against the bonds holding her, she tossed in the air as she was dragged across the polished white floor of what appeared to be a grand house.

_Where the hell am I? And what is going to happen to me? _

Her mind flooded with a series of unanswered questions as she frantically scanned her body for her wand. She had never been without it before, and now in the middle of a war, when she was Merlin knows where and captured by the enemy, was not the best time to misplace it.

_There has to be something I can do. _

Her eyes scanned the room for anything that could help her, but they were greeted with a blur of shapes and a mass of black. She felt her breath quicken against her gag as the full seriousness of the situation dawned on her.

She was a wartime prisoner at the hands of Death Eaters and no one knew where she was. She had not told anyone where she was going so it could be hours before they even realised something was wrong. And then there was the issue of the Daily Prophet; Jessica Stevens was many things that were undesirable but she was not a liar. If the former Head Girl said that the Death Eaters were abusing prisoners then that's what they were doing.

Her body gave an involuntary shudder at the thought, _is that going to happen to me as well? _She forced her legs to kick firmly into the air but to no avail as her right side banged unceremoniously against a freezing stone step and her whole body clattered next to a series of stairs. The area was darkening, as she seemed to be leaving the grand reception rooms and heading to what had to be the dungeons of an old manor house. She refused to wince or cry as tears welled in her eyes, she was not going to give them any power over her that they did not already have.

She had to keep reminding herself to breathe and not give in as she felt her body hit a grubby floor and light burst behind her eyes as her head resounded with a loud crack upon landing heavily on the cold stone floor. A floor that was covered in a mixture of dirt and blood, which could not have been cleaned since the house was built. There was a rank smell in the air.

The coarse rope that was holding her wrists tightly together had begun to irritate her skin, while her face was being pushed in at both sides with a mucky dirt stained gag that was making her jaw ache in pain. Not that they mattered much compared to everything else, she couldn't have landed herself in a worse position if she had tried.

How could she have been this stupid and allowed herself to get caught?

It was not as if she had not had constant warnings. There were the rumours from the old hag in Knockturn Alley that she should have listened to instead of ignoring as old wives tales. Tom at the Leaky Cauldron had told her to be careful and that her pattern of everyday activities had become predictable. Mad-eye Moody had always started meetings with the need for constant vigilance. Harry had been telling her that she needed to be more careful because she was his girlfriend, a Weasley and a member of the Order of the Phoenix; that she was not indestructible and he could not bare to lose her. Ron had told her that her vibrant red hair made her stand out in the middle of a crowd. And her mum had pleaded with her not to go to certain places, telling her horror stories of dark wizards, wars and young girls, stressing the need to be careful because she was her little girl.

Damn it, her mum had been right.

She had let stubbornness get the better of her as she had chosen to ignore all of them and believed that she could take care of herself.

Yet, she had taken care of herself so well before. She had fought successfully in several battles already, with injuries no greater than broken and bruised bones. Had she survived all that, only to end up being tracked down by Death Eaters on a street? She would have laughed about the ridiculous nature of the situation if it had not been so serious. One moment of idle curiosity had got the better of her and she was now at the mercy of Death Eaters.

She should have known better.

She was a target with vivid red hair that was very visible in a crowd or on a street, especially when she lit her wand and illuminated her face. It must have been easy for them to find her. With her preoccupied state of mind as she focused on that figure in their trap, she must have been so easy to stun. And the worst part of it all was that she had known that it had been a trap; known she should have run instead of staying there like a mug. She might as well have worn a sign around her neck saying: _'Ginny Weasley: Please Attack Me.'_

She bit her lip to stop tears from flowing down her battered and bloodstained face as a throbbing pain echoed through her body from both of her sides with her every breath. No matter how much this hurt, they were not going to see her in pain. She was not going to give them any satisfaction.

Slowly she took another long deep breath, wincing slightly despite herself. This was it, she was going to be yet another casualty lost in war, another statistic in the history books. Or even worse, she was going to end up like Jess had. A hollow laugh sounded in her head; once again, she was copying Jessica Stevens.

She forced herself to take another couple of deep breaths, ignoring the pain in every inch of her body. She was going to die how she had lived, with the courage that ran through every witch or wizard that had been sorted into Gryffindor. The bravery that was indented into the very souls of every one in her school house, and what the ring on her left hand represented. Shaking the blood soaked hair from her face, she glared upwards through her brown eyes at her captors.

"You bastards," she muttered through her gag.

"I couldn't quite make that out," said the nearest Death Eater as he waved his hand and removed her gag.

"You bastards."

"Such language. I can't say I'm shocked, but I thought you had been brought up as a young lady, Miss Weasley."

A mass of floor length black robes surrounded her as she was entrapped in the middle of them. They were all cowards, cowards that did not show their faces. They hid behind the Dark Mark and masks while they performed unthinkable acts against Muggles, witches and wizards alike and then went back into respectable society and pretended they were not involved.

Her eyes darted quickly around, trying to take in the whole picture. She couldn't see much, but she could tell that she was in a large room with natural light. Worse yet, she was enclosed by at least two dozen Death Eaters that all had her wands pointed at her. Her heart faltered as she held back tears and fought against another shuddered that ran through her body.

She was only eighteen and she was going to die.

Dying was something that she had never imagined, despite all the battles she had been involved in with Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix and even when she had been lying on a cold floor fighting for her life in the Chamber of Secrets. She had always imagined that she would grow up and become a proper adult.

She wanted to fulfil the potential that everyone seemed to think she had from her family, to her Hogwarts professors and the heads of department at the Ministry of Magic. Find a job that she wanted and could do, enjoying a fairly successful career. But then again, maybe the reason she kept turning job offers down was because she was destined to die on this floor. At least she would not be letting people down and forcing them to find a replacement just months after hiring her.

She wanted to spend time with her family and friends, laughing loudly at Weasley family dinners, pulling pranks, playing Quidditch and rolling her eyes as her mother lectured her. She wanted to marry Harry and spend the rest of her life with him; hopefully, one day in the very distant future, creating a family of her own. Well, at least this should significantly cut down the Weasley intake into Hogwarts in the next twenty years.

All her hopes, dreams and ambitions had disappeared in a matter of minutes and she had no one to blame except herself.

Didn't she deserve better than this? Better than to die on a dirty floor at the hands of Death Eaters? Didn't she deserve to grow up, survive the war and live her life? Or did she?

She was no better than others that had lost their lives. No better than Hagrid, Snape, Colin, Dean or Charlie.

_Charlie._

This was going to kill her mum. Mrs Weasley had cried non-stop for over a week when the news had reached her of his death. Charlie and a couple of other members of the Order of the Phoenix had stood up to the Death Eaters when Riddle had sent them to collect the Dragons to add to his army. They had lost the fight and their lives as they were out numbered seven to one. To this day, no one risked mentioning Charlie's name in their mother's presence unless they had a large supply of tissues.

But Charlie had died a hero's death, unlike her. Shown bravery and courage, things that were rapidly escaping from her.

Now that she was facing her own possible death, she was terrified. She felt any colour drain from her face, and her body was shaking. But she knew one thing for certain, she was not going to betray Harry nor help Riddle. She was going to be as strong as Charlie had been facing those Death Eaters, show as much courage as Lupin when he threw himself in front of the killing curse to protect Tonks and as brave as Sirius when he fell through the veil in the Department of Mysteries. She would not let Harry, her family or the Order of the Phoenix down to help the thing that had haunted her nightmares since the age of eleven.

"I'm not going to tell you anything. You've got the wrong witch if you needed any information. I'd rather die than tell anything to help Riddle," she said. Summoning as much strength and confidence as she could muster, she pushed herself clumsily to her knees and spat at the nearest Death Eater's feet. "So you might as well get it over with and kill me now."

"No doubt in time that's exactly what we will do." A chilling voice replied as the Death Eater pulled a wand out of his large pocket in his robes, her wand. Her heart felt like it was going to break in two as she saw her small eight and half inch Hazel wand snap and there was a deafening silence as the two pieces hit the floor. "But I think we'll have some fun first. Our Lord likes us to stay satisfied and you're such a pretty young pureblood witch, despite your deluded ideas. Actually, I was kind of hoping you would put up a fight. It makes things so much more interesting when I get to coax it out of you."

She knew that voice. It was the cold and heartless voice of Lucius Malfoy. The man who had a feud with her father dating back decades and given her a cursed diary that still haunted her. The man who was known to be one of the most ruthless Death Eaters as well as being one of Riddle's key supporters.

"Welcome to my home, Miss Weasley."

A hollow laugh sounded in her head. She was at the mercy of her family's natural enemy and if she did not laugh, she was going to cry.

Harry knocked on the door to Hermione's London flat just outside Diagon Alley. He was as likely, if not more likely, to find Ron here as he was his own home. Since he wanted to talk to the pair of his best friends before heading over to the Burrow, this seemed like the right place to go to. Sometimes he failed to believe that the two of them lived in separate addresses and still did not know why the two of them insisted on keeping their own individual flats when they spent so much time at Hermione's home. Ron often claimed that he needed to keep his independence and that came from having his own home, even if he spent at least ninety percent of the time at his long term girlfriend's, which was by far the nicer of the two of his best friends flats.

Hermione opened the front door that led straight into the living room with small kitchen attached of her modest two-bedroom flat. Her once bushy golden brown hair had grown into waves as she had gotten older and was now in the neat French plait that she put it into every morning when she woke up. She had started already to get dressed for going over to the Weasley's family home later for the surprise party that evening. Ron, on the other hand, was unshaven from the morning, despite it being half past seven in the evening. He was wearing an old, well-worn pair of jeans that had faded and a Chuddley Cannon's bright orange t-shirt that clashed horribly with his hair and had a small tear in it on the arm gained from a fight at Hogwarts with Michael Corner.

The homey, small living room was spotless, despite the pile of books and scrolls of parchment that lay strewn on the oak coffee table in the centre of the room. Hermione took her job in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the Ministry of Magic very seriously and often brought work home with her to do over a weekend. .

"Harry," Hermione exclaimed, as she pulled him into a hug, almost knocking him off balance before ushering him inside into the living room and closing the door to the outside world. "Come in, I want to hear everything."

"Give him a minute to get in and let him breathe, Hermione," Ron said. He got up from his chair and threw the day's copy of the Daily Prophet that he had been reading on the top of the pile of Hermione's books on the coffee table. "Would you like a drink, mate?" he asked with a grin.

"A coffee would be good," Harry replied, as he made his way further into the room and slumped onto the chair in which Ron had just vacated. He watched as Ron headed towards the small kitchen, "and you better make one each for the both of you."

Ron turned and smiled as he raised his eyebrows. "You think you need something to keep you awake tonight?"

"Call it a hunch," Harry said with a large grin on his face, "but I think it's going to be a long night as the party goes on until well into tomorrow."

"So she said yes then?" Hermione said as her eyes shot to the door as if expecting it to open again. "Where is Ginny anyway?"

"Knockturn Alley," he replied bluntly, as he took his cup of coffee from Ron's hands.

Ron's face reddened as he almost dropped his and Hermione's steaming cups of coffee. "Why the bloody hell did you let her go down there?"

"I didn't let her go down there. I hate her entering that street as much as you do, but Ginny's an adult, Ron. If she wants to go down Knockturn Alley we can't stop her. And the more we object to her going there, the more she'll go," Harry said calmly as he saw the image of his beautiful fiancée with her long red hair, bright brown eyes and mischievous yet innocent smile appear in his head. "Besides, I spoke to Fred and George earlier about what she is doing and they say that she is perfectly safe. I trust them and Ginny both. You worry too much mate."

"But Ginny's…"

"Don't you dare say 'a girl', Ronald Bilius Weasley. Ginny is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, which I'm sure she will tell you at the Burrow later," Hermione explained as she took a seat on the sofa next to where her boyfriend had sat down. "So was it a yes?"

"Yes."

"And does she know that we all knew about it?"

"Not exactly," Harry's grin had grown as he took a sip from his coffee. "Can you just imagine Ginny's reaction if she knew I'd discussed the proposal with the two of you first? She would have said no on principal."

Ron laughed. "We are known, especially Ginny, for our thick skulls. We don't like being told what to do by anyone."

"Too right, it's not easy dating a Weasley, let alone getting one to marry you. Your sister can be far too stubborn at times," Harry agreed with his oldest friend as he glanced over at Hermione who had a blank expression on her face. "But once the ring is on her finger, she can't take it off, right? Binding magical contract."

"That's right." Ron said, as the tips of his ears glowed red. "And all I can say is that you are absolutely bloody crazy, mate, because it's a huge commitment with no going back now. Ginny is completely mental at times. I have to say, I don't envy you at all."

Hermione sent Ron a disapproving glare as her forehead creased; she had stayed unusually quiet for the last few minutes and Harry thought he knew why even if Ron didn't. She was desperate for a proposal herself but Ron hated the idea of so much commitment.

Once an engagement ring was placed on the finger of a witch and she had said yes to a proposal, they entered a binding magical contract. This contract was non reversible. There were dire consequences for anyone that removed the ring, leading to them never being able to take part in a proposal or even a relationship again. A shudder went down his spine as he thought of a piece of his heart being pulled out through his mouth and sucked into the ring, similar to a Dementor's kiss.

Harry had watched his two best friends finally confessed their feelings for each other in the Christmas holidays of their sixth year at Hogwarts when in the middle of a blazing argument; Ron had reached in and kissed her. They had spent the rest of the holidays purely in each other's company, either arguing or kissing. The strange nature of Ron and Hermione's 'honeymoon' period as a couple had been quite amusing to watch as they could go from one extreme to the other in seconds. It was much more enjoyable than watching Ginny, who he was just beginning realise he had feelings for as more than a friend, and his heart would jump when she sent a smile in his direction. She spent that Christmas holidays kissing her boyfriend and treating Harry as just one of her friends.

Yet despite the length of his two best friends' relationship, Ron had shown no great signs of any major acts of commitment, confessing to Harry he enjoyed a certain level of independence. And Ginny had told him that Hermione kept hinting that she would like a ring on the finger of her left hand sometime soon. That sometimes she thought nothing had really changed since they had been at Hogwarts. Stating that if no one knocked the idea into Ron's head, she would end up dying a spinster while her boyfriend hummed and hawed about what to do.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked her.

"I'm fine," Hermione replied in a stiff almost forced voice. It was similar to the one he used when he choose to utter the words 'I'm fine'. "Besides, I want to hear more about your proposal and Ginny's reaction."

"Well, we were walking down Diagon Alley, just talking," Harry started, as he placed his cup down and made himself more comfortable on a chair, "when before I knew what I was doing I found myself dropping to one knee next to Quality Quidditch Supplies."

"So much for all the planning then," Ron said with a laugh. "You could have saved yourself a ton of gallons and a hell of a lot of hassle if you were just going to lose the plot and let your plans go kaput by proposing to her in the middle of a street."

"It's called spontaneity, Ron. It's romantic," Hermione lectured at her boyfriend before turning back around. "Please go on, Harry."

"Well, she went all quiet."

"Ginny… quiet? Are you sure you proposed to the right girl?"

"I wish you would go quiet for a bit," she snapped. Ron looked quite taken aback at her words, as if he had just been hit across the head. "Let Harry finish his story because it is the nearest I am ever going to get to a proposal."

"Come on, 'Mione," Ron said, as he moved closer to her and took her hand in his, "we don't need a bit of paper or a ring to show how much we love each other. We do that in lots of different ways everyday. I could not imagine my life without you in it and, when the time is right, you will get your ring. Trust that I love you."

"Okay, I trust you." Hermione replied, with a slight shrug but her body seemed to loosen as she let herself fall backwards into Ron's arms and the tension seemed to lift from the room. "So what happened next, Harry?"

Ginny fought back a shudder; she was not going to show them any sign of weakness. She was not going to show them that she was terrified of dying and the unknown concept that led to it. Using all her strength, she would stop them from touching her. She was not Tom Riddle's tool anymore, but an adult, and she did not have to do anything they told her to, least of all betraying those people she loved. She could fight this. Harry and her family's safety, along with the war and the Order of the Phoenix's secrets were more important than what happened to her. She was not that important.

She felt a Death Eater grab the ends of her hair and her neck as he harshly pulled her to her feet, keeping his hand on her back. It almost felt like being a rag doll in the control of a cruel Death Eater. As her body straightened, her eyes started to water again and against her will she let out a small yelp of pain. A ringing, chilling laughter echoed around the dank dungeon as her weak and battered body was being twisted to the whim of the stronger man behind her.

It was like being kicked repetitively in the stomach as she heard their heartless laughter in her ears. They were enjoying watching her suffer. They wanted to hear her scream. She was not going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they had hurt her, especially when there was no one that would hear her screams and help her.

She closed her eyes as she attempted to muster all the energy she could. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting. Focusing her attention on just her legs, she swung both of her legs backwards as forcefully as she could, attempting, unsuccessfully, to try to kick the man holding her.

"Feisty, aren't we. I like that in a girl."

Ginny narrowed her eyes as disgust flooded through her body and she kept her lips tightly shut. She was not going to give them the satisfaction of a response. Her glare fixed on the holes in his mask and ignored his roving white-gloved hand. Her mouth snapped as she saw his hand approaching her face. Malfoy was not going to touch her except to get his fingers bitten if she could do anything about it.

"_Petrificus Totalus_," he said in an idle, bored tone.

Her body was shaking on the inside, despite every muscle being locked tightly together with the full body bind. Her breath quickened as she felt a long, gloved finger trace from her jaw line and onto her neck with nothing she could do about it. Laughter from the Death Eaters gathered around her, rang in her ears. No wonder they had been able to hurt so many people. She could feel her nerves trembling as she felt the hand drop down her shoulder and along her ripped shirt, which he started to unbutton as his hand found her left breast.

_I'm going to be okay, he can't hurt me,_ she kept whispering in her mind. She just had to stay strong and not let them play with her head. This was not Harry; the touch was not coming from love so it did not matter. Malfoy's touch did not mean anything to her.

"My, my, your body has matured quite nicely, Miss Weasley." She inwardly cringed as she felt his hand slowly moving down her body undoing the buttons on her shirt. "It's a shame that you pollute it with Mudbloods and half breeds; you could have made a fine pureblood marriage."

She could feel the looks of hunger from the Death Eaters around her but she just needed to ignore them and focus on the feeling that was starting to appear in her fingers. She slowly moved her fingers, moving them carefully around her ruby engagement ring and fixed her brown eyes on the figure before her. Malfoy's spell was starting to loosen and she was going to make him pay for trailing his grubby hand along her body. She drew her hand back slightly and spat straight into the eyeholes of the Death Eaters mask.

Malfoy was not going to make her a victim again.

A cold laugh echoed around the dungeon again as Lucius Malfoy removed his mask and threw it to the floor. The other Death Eaters took their lead from him and masks littered the floor revealing several familiar faces of former Hogwarts students that she had known. Malfoy moved his hand from her body and slowly wiped the spit from his eyes and a smirk crossed his lips.

"So much for the legendary Malfoy hospitality. From what I have seen I won't be recommending a trip to the grand manor," she uttered trying to keep the illusion of confidence in her voice as the _Petrificus Totalis _spell that Malfoy had cast on her broke. The Death Eater behind her moved on Malfoy's nod and she felt her body crash onto the cold hard floor. Taking a deep breath she ignored the new pain in her ribs and glared upwards. "Obviously money can't buy everything; respect, love, honesty, friendship and common decency. I guess I'm the lucky one in this room because I have people in my life who love me and know those values."

"You can't bait me, girl," Malfoy hissed, as he towered over her, his smirk growing. "Nothing you say will change the fact that I have you here. It will destroy your Muggle-loving parents, disgraces. Losing another child to the Dark Lord and the rise of the Dark Order. Their only daughter in the hands of a Malfoy, it could not really get much better. I was going to give you to Draco, but then again I may keep you for myself as a final parting shot against your fool of a father."

"My parents are no fools and Charlie died as a hero. You're not fit to speak his name. He was, and still is, worth a hundred of you," she spat as she felt a new set of aches penetrate through her body again. This time they were twisted with a stinging feeling of guilt that felt much worse than any of her aching limbs and she fought back a new set of tears. "My parents are proud of me and everything that I have done. They brought me up the right way."

She had lost count of the number of times that her mother had pleaded with her not to join the Order of the Phoenix, claiming that war was no place for teenagers. Her family had constantly tried to protect her from the war and she had repeatedly thrown it back in their faces. She was too stubborn for her own good. Looking her mum straight in the eyes and stating that now she was of age and had finished school, she would be involved in this war with or without her family's blessing. Claiming that she could defend herself in a battle as well as any of her brothers who had received the support of her parents for their actions. And that she deserved the right to fight especially after what had happened to her in her past.

But Malfoy was right and that hurt more than any curse or bruised bone. This was going to rip her mother apart, just like Charlie's death had done, and send her into the same state of anxious worry as when Percy had been in St Mungo's. And she was here because of pure stupidity.

She fixed her warm brown eyes directly into Lucius Malfoy's steel cold grey ones. "I am fighting on the right side of this war, standing up to evil. We know the difference between the right and the bigoted. And I'm not scared of anything you can do because I know that some things are worth dying for."

"You speak Dumbledore's propaganda so well, yet you served the Dark Lord and attempted to kill Mudbloods just seven years ago."

"That was Riddle."

"Was it?" Malfoy questioned as he leaned down and dropped his voice into an unnerving whisper. "Surely the Dark Lord was just responding to your needs, your innermost desires."

The familiar element of doubt flickered in her mind as a sense of shame and guilt shone through her face and her head automatically hung. Her eyes glistened with tears as her memories and nightmares flooded back to her and her mind was filled with the thoughts from her terrifying first year at Hogwarts.

She was a Gryffindor, a Weasley, a member of the Order of the Phoenix and Harry's fiancée with Godric Gryffindor's ring on her finger. She detested Tom Riddle, his followers and the dark arts, and used every ounce of power in her to fight against them. She had not been responsible for the events of her first year; it was the cold-hearted man standing over her that was to blame. That is what everyone had told her at the time and she had constantly told herself since those dreadful months.

Naïve. Yes, she had been naïve, and far too trusting to fall into Riddle's trap. Maybe from the situation she now found herself in, nothing had changed, but she had never shared his beliefs. No, now she was older and wiser for those events that had haunted her first year at Hogwarts. She did not trust people lightly and was determined to fight against a controlling and malicious Riddle with all her heart. And now that was not going to change just because she was lying on the floor in the Malfoy dungeons without her wand, and at the whims of Death Eaters.

"That was Riddle."

"If you say so," Malfoy replied coolly, as he twisted her body with a flick of his wand and her ruby engagement ring caught in his wand light, "Miss Weasley, you did not say that you were engaged."

"You did not ask."

"You should have said. You see, Miss Weasley, this fact changes everything. You are even more useful and important than I originally thought when I planned to invite you to my home." His cold voice hung in the still air of the dungeon. As he caressed his wand over the fingers of her left hand, a shiver ran down her spine. "I guess the only question is what will remain of you when Potter attempts another foolish mission of love to get his naïve and deluded fiancée back? I'm guessing that once I'm finished, Potter will be disgusted with you, not many people want our girls back once we're done. You're filth and unworthy of anything but the one on one care we give you." He laughed again. "Besides, Potter will be in the hands of our Lord by then. _Crucio_."


	5. Chapter Four

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Four: Isolation

Fighting to regain full consciousness, Ginny slowly open her eyes and tried to keep them open. As she took a deep breath to try to clear her head, it was cut short by sharp pain that radiated throughout her ribcage. With a groan, she gathered her strength and struggled with bound hands and feet to slowly pulled herself upright. Once sitting, she became all too aware of her head throbbing dully. When she raised her tied hands and pressed them to her forehead in an effort to assuage the ache, she winced as a new, sharp pain now overrode the throbbing. With her fingertips, she gently explored a sticky and tender cut above her brow; the pain in her head having receded back to a throb except for when she brushed against the raw edges of her wound. Drawing her fingers away from her face, she noticed traces of congealed blood on them and knew the cut was not freshly bleeding.

Trying to ignore the pain in her body and tamp down her rising fear, Ginny started to assess her surroundings. Her cell was a small, stone room, wide enough to lie down on the thin and filthy mattress provided, but only just. The depth, however, was not great at all; she could tell that she would be able to touch both the front and back wall at the same time by merely reaching out her hands. The only light was provided by two single candles ensconced high on the wall on each end of the room. In the feeble light they provided, she could make out a slimy film of mould growing on the rough grey stones that imprisoned her. The mottled growth added a foul smell to the damp and stale air.

Desperately, she scanned the dark and dingy walls before her gaze came to rest on the steel door in front of her that was the only entrance or exit from her prison. Above the door was a small grate, presumably for air circulation. Though, from the stillness and stench around her, Ginny doubted the grate provided much more than a minimal supply of fresh oxygen.

The cell was not fit for an animal, let alone a teenage girl. She needed to find a way to escape. She needed to stop other people, people that she loved, from suffering due to her stupidity.

Stiffening her back, she braced herself against the wall behind her and lashed out her legs, slamming her bound feet against the grey door with all the power she could muster. She winced as her legs easily rebounded; the force she had exerted against the door now jarring through her whole body, causing a world of new aches.

Ginny let out a hollow laugh that bounced around the room as yet more tears welled in her eyes. _Well done, Gin, that was a fantastic idea._ Of course, they would lock the door, and she didn't have the strength in her body left to smash down a locked door. They weren't going to leave her an opening to escape. You didn't go to the effort of kidnapping a girl and placing her in a pit, only to make it easy for her to run away. It just didn't make any sense to do that. And now all she had to show for that ingenious idea was possibly a broken foot to add to the every growing list of injuries she had suffered since the afternoon. With ideas like that, it was a wonder she earned any NEWTs, let alone a mixture of Exceeds Expectations and Outstandings.

She looked over her battered body, from her throbbing right foot upwards, through her ripped jeans and to her open shirt. Tears fell freely down her cheeks, stinging the small cuts and abrasions on her face. She was determined not to cry for those bastards… to give them any satisfaction; but she could let her tears flow just for her as long as no one else knew.

What would her mother say if she could see her now? Her mum that could spot dirt from a mile away, and refused to let them enter The Burrow after playing in the nearby fields. Making sure that all the mud that they had brought back was left on their wellies in the garden before they entered the house. Or having them clean their hands before they sat down at the kitchen table. Ginny never thought that she would miss her mum so much, miss hearing her say that everything was going to be okay. She even missed the scoldings that told her how very much she was cared for. In fact she could almost hear Mrs Weasley's stern voice in her head reprimanding her for her current condition, "_Ginevra Molly Weasley, what on earth have you been doing to get into that state? You need to remember that you are a young lady. Go upstairs and have a bath now, please."_

If only she could soak in a bath for a couple of hours, relax and ease the aches and pains of her battered and beaten body. Even if it would not remove the feeling of being dirty and tainted after having Lucius Malfoy's grubby hand trailing across her body. Nothing would ever be able to remove that feeling. But at least falling asleep in the bath at The Burrow would ease her weak body, if not her mind, for a while. And she would be safe.

From the parts of her body that she could see, she imagined that she looked like that strange Muggle painting by Picasso that hung in Hermione's living room. She was amazed, considering her state, that she could still move instead of just curling up on this floor, closing her eyes and choosing never to open them again. But, she had too much to live for. And Harry had always said that you gained extra strength, resilience and spirit just when you thought everything had disappeared. He called it a siege mentally, as your body started to use its natural defences just as long as you were willing to keep fighting, and that was just what she was going to do now.

She tried to slowly work at the ropes that tightly bound her wrists together. Why did she have to bite her nails when she got nervous at a Quidditch match? She could have used long nails like the ones that Fleur had to pick against the coarse rope. There had to be some way to free her hands. Anything was possible just as long as you believed that you could do it. Wasn't that what she always told people? She let out a small sigh as she ran her right fingers along her left hand. It was comforting that she could still move them. There just had to be something that she could do, she was not going to be a victim at Malfoy's hands again; she was stronger than that.

As a thought occurred to her, a small smile graced her lips and she could feel her heart buoyed ever so slightly. It felt such a relief to be able to smile about anything again. It had been the first time that she had let a smile emerge since she had left Harry at two o'clock that afternoon. She had something that was much more important than long nails. She had a man who loved her with all of his heart, just like she loved him. A man that she could not imagine life without, and she was going to see him like that until she died, even if that was going to be much sooner than she had ever expected. She was not going to give up without a fight and he had given her something that could get her through all of this.

Slowly and carefully she twisted her left wrist so that her hand bent upwards in pain. She bit her lip to stop any more tears flooding out of her eyes; she'd shed enough of them and was not going to show any more signs of weakness. When she had been just four or five-years-old and had got into a fight with Ron, Bill had told her something that she would never forget. With the sun beating against their backs as he carried her back to the Burrow, he had told her if she thought about something else or focused her pain on another part of her body, then her broken arm would not hurt any more as she forgot about it. And it had worked. She had not realised that she was in any pain as her mum fixed her arm and shouted at Ron. Since then, she had chosen to bite her bottom lip, and focus all her thoughts and pain on her lip instead of the real area that was hurting.

She rubbed her left hand up and down the wrist on her right arm and the ruby snagged against the rope. Her smile grew as slowly and gradually, her binds started to loosen as the stone in the engagement ring cut against the coarse rope, splitting its ends. She knew that she had said that she would marry Harry for a reason.

What seemed like hours later, her hands were freed and she rubbed her wrists and flexed her fingers. As the pain disappeared slightly, she enjoyed the relief of not having her hands tightly bound together. She ignored the rope burn marks on her wrists. That was nothing really; they could be fixed in a second once she got out of here. Her thumb and middle finger ran over her engagement ring and she let out a huge sigh of relief. The ring was still prefect with no marks on it and the bright red ruby was shining and still firmly fixed in its setting. But then a ring that was a thousand years old had probably been through worse than this.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she whispered to the ring as if it could talk back and offer her some words of comfort.

She quickly kissed the ring before untying her feet. Now that she was free to move, there had to be some way out of this dank cell. On her hands and knees, she started to crawl all over the floor feeling every inch of it for some kind of trick entrance. There had to be something. While at Hogwarts, hadn't Draco Malfoy always bragged about the trap doors and hidden entrances in his home? "_Father is well hidden of course; the thing about having money, knowing the right people and a home dating back to the sixteenth century is there are always places to hide things from Mudbloods and blood traitors."_

She just needed to find one of those doors now.

Her eyes widened as her fingers brushed against something on the floor. Softly, she ran her hand over it. What the hell was a book doing in here? She gently picked up the small leather bound object before instantly dropping it. She didn't need to see the book closely to know what it was. She knew it so well as it had made such an imprint in her mind only seven years ago. It was a small, leather bound black diary that had been her first friend at Hogwarts, or at least that was what she had thought at the time.

She fell back against the cold, damp wall as she kicked Tom Riddle's diary as far away from her as she could. When she had been just eleven years old, she had poured her heart and soul into something and someone. Tom Riddle and that bloody diary. The diary that could have destroyed so many lives, including her own.

And now, after numerous encounters with Dementors over the last couple of years, those scenes from her terrifying first year at Hogwarts came flashing back to her when she least expected it. Memories never before available to her now haunted her dreams and turned them into nightmares. She couldn't remember the last time that she had what she considered to be a normal night's sleep. Instead, she saw herself killing roosters, talking Parseltongue, seeing the Basilisk and watching Riddle emerge from that diary.

She had never been able to recall performing any of these acts, and yet, due to the Dementors, these images of her possession had been brought to the forefront of her conscious mind. Dealing with these memories was difficult enough when she was awake, but nighttime held a particular horror for her. At times, she thought the most disturbing thing was that she could only remember these actions in her nightmares. Then, she was subject to disturbing nightmares where her mind was being raped and Riddle played with her every emotion at his very whim.

Nothing was ever going to change the guilt that she felt and seeing that diary and knowing it was in the same room as her again was not helping at all. Malfoy was right, she was a fraud. She had a tainted and dirty history and would always be the stupid little girl that had reopened the Chamber of Secrets. She did not deserve people to love her, not from her family, Harry or anyone else. All she wanted to do was just forget, forget what had happened, but she had never seemed to be able to.

So, when everyone else seemed to have forgotten, she had just let them. It had been easier that way and she did not want to talk about what had happened to her. She did not want to be reminded and did a good job at hiding it. She had become a remarkable actress over the years and an expert in lying and twisting the truth. In fact, since studying Muggle studies at OWL, she had prided herself on being able to win a BAFTA, if not an Oscar, for her performances. No one knew how she really felt as she would flash her fun loving and innocent smile at people. But she did not need that diary in here to feed her insecurities; they were already there.

Now, once again through her own stupidity and naiveté, she had managed to be at the mercy of Death Eaters and a pawn of Tom Riddle's. She was left with nothing to do in this pit except exist; her only activities were sleeping, which she was reluctant to do, contemplating a non-existent escape route, or just thinking.

_This is a real mess you have got yourself into, Gin_.

Harry was staring at the Weasley family clock in the small and cramped kitchen at The Burrow. This used to be his favourite object in the Weasley family home, but today he was growing to hate the timepiece. The wooden clock was useless if you wanted to know the time, as it did not have any numbers on it but instead contained descriptions of where each Weasley family member was.

He was willing the name _'Ginerva Molly',_ written in gold handwriting and engraved into a hand that was currently pointing to the position of _'lost'_, to move. At least it was not pointing at the number twelve position of 'MORTAL PERIL'. Even worse, it could have disappeared off the clock altogether like the hand with the engraved name of '_Charles William' _had done. But surely there had to be something more descriptive than just _'lost'_? A person did not just go missing.

All the Weasleys were stuffed into the small kitchen, each pair of eyes occasionally darting to and from the clock. Mrs Weasley was bustling around the room, trying to keep herself busy to the protest of her husband, who kept opening the clock to check that it was still working. Ron was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the table while Hermione gently rubbed his back. Percy and Penelope were flicking through book after book, frantically looking for something. Bill's body was intertwined with Fleur's as he clung to her, his head resting on her shoulder. An exceptionally pale Fred muttered to an equally ashen-faced George, so quietly that no one could hear what he was saying. The room felt like they were at a wake; the normally boisterous atmosphere replaced with an unnatural silence.

Harry looked back at the clock and resisted the urge to throw his empty glass at it. There had to be something they could do instead of sitting idle while Ginny was God knew where.

The atmosphere in the Weasley family home had changed drastically from just a few hours ago. When Harry had arrived at The Burrow, a celebratory atmosphere had greeted him. Hugs were flung around freely, with Molly Weasley holding onto him for at least five minutes as tears of joy filled her eyes. Arthur Weasley had taken him aside to explain how happy he was, and that despite everything going on in this dreadful time, he was positive that things would work out and Harry would make his daughter very happy. He had even found Percy's lecture on his younger sister's honour bearable, though he had a difficult time keeping a straight face as Fred and George were mimicking their older brothers' actions from behind him.

They had started to worry at around ten o'clock when Ginny had become an hour late and the decorations had been taken down. It was not unheard of for Ginny to be late, but for her to be an hour late was very much unexpected, especially without her sending an owl with an apology to her mother. She tended to have more sense than to risk her mother's wrath over a simple thing that could be sorted out so easily. Yet four hours later, as they faced the early morning, everything had changed. There was now a nervous tension that had filled the room and a deafening silence so that you could hear a pin drop.

Ron slowly lifted his head and placed his hand into Hermione's. With a helpless look on his face, he asked, "Who saw Ginny last?"

"Me," Harry replied in a hollow voice. He wished he could say something more productive in answer to Ron's question.

"How long ago?"

"Around eleven hours," Harry said dully. His heart sank below his navel as he glanced at Fred. "It was about two o'clock when she went to do a couple of errands."

How could he have not noticed that Ginny had gone missing for so long? It had been eight hours before he had even thought that something was not quite right and had gone to check the kitchen clock. What kind of a husband was he going to make? Why had he watched her walk into that street without saying anything?

_Seventeen-year-old Harry walked down to the Gryffindor common room from his dormitory early on an autumn Sunday afternoon. Yesterday he had spent a wonderful afternoon with Ginny after he had finally plucked up the courage to ask her to Hogsmeade. Since then, however, he had spent a restless night as dreams of Voldemort flashed in and out of his mind. He was now having second thoughts about asking Ginny out. The last thing he wanted was for her to get hurt because of him._

_He scanned the room for a flash of bright red as he tried to find her. Quickly and almost instantly, he spotted her talking to a knot of fellow sixth year Gryffindors by the fire. She had an uplifting smile that highlighted her face as she was laughing and ignoring what looked to be an essay hanging over the table with her quill still in her right hand. Leaving a pretty blond girl who was sitting besides her to tutt and frown at her while she worked on her own essay._

_It was not unusual to see Ginny surrounded by a bunch of her classmates, nor was it uncommon to see her ignoring pieces of homework in front of her as she choose to exercise her mouth instead of her wrist. Ginny lit up any room that she was in as her eyes smiled every time her lips turned into a grin. He loved that smile; it was so full of mischief and innocence at the same time that it could lift his heart within seconds of seeing it, but he had to put that thought and smile out of his mind._

_Harry's heart fluttered as he slowly made his way across the room to talk to her. Despite the fact that he had a tendency to struggle in talking to girls, Ginny always made it feel easy. She seemed to be completely at ease in talking to boys, but that was probably due to the fact she had seen him every summer since she was eleven and did have six older brothers. Yet this was the first time in his life that he was actually dreading talking to her._

_"Hey, Gin," he muttered as a lump rose in his throat._

_"Hi, Harry," she said, smiling at him, "are you okay?"_

_"Yeah, well kind of… actually, not really."_

_Ginny raised her eyebrows slightly as she bit her bottom lip. "You're not making any sense."_

_He glanced at the girls that were around him. Why did they have to stare at him? His mouth seemed to go dry and he swallowed hard as he looked back at Ginny. Why was this so hard? But Ginny appeared to be reading his mind as placed her quill down and rolled up her parchment._

_"Why don't we take a walk and we can talk about it? It's not like I'm doing this anyway," she said. She collected her jacket off the back of the chair as she stepped away from it and dropped her voice as she got closer to him. "Besides, I think that little miss prefect is on the verge of killing me."_

_"Well I wouldn't want that, but what about the essay?"_

_"I'll do it later, it's not important," she said as she slipped her old faded jacket over her shoulders. "Come on, take me down to the lake and you can work out if you're okay."_

_He smiled as he led her out of the common room. Somehow, Ginny always knew exactly what to say to make him feel better. So, why was he thinking of ending it before it had even begun? He couldn't bear to lose her and that was what was going to happen if he let her into his heart. It would kill him if Ginny lost her life just like his parents, Sirius and Remus. He was not going to let Ginny suffer the same fate._

_He pushed open the door to the Hogwarts grounds thinking to himself that he had to pull himself away from her if this was going to work. He reasoned that he could not look at her if he was going to do this. Even looking into those gleaming brown eyes, seeing her freckled face, or watching her flash him a heart-stopping smile was going to make this harder than he had thought that it should be. He couldn't risk Ginny Weasley. He just wanted a normal life and not one where the people he loved died._

_He let out a sigh; he was not going to drag Ginny into this mess._

_"Are you okay?" Ginny asked, stopping directly in front of him. "Whatever it is, you know you can tell me. I want to be there for you."_

_"But you can't be."_

_"What?"_

_"You can't be there for me, it's not safe," he explained. He turned to stare out into the lake. "Everyone I love dies and after yesterday, I'm not taking that risk with you."_

_"You're not taking the risk, I am," she replied bluntly. She grabbed his hand and turned him to face her. Her mane of hair was flaring and her eyes were alight. "If you want to break up with me because you don't like me or things aren't working out, then fine. But don't you dare do it because you're being bloody noble. You see, after what Riddle has done to me, I'm going to be in this fight. No one is going to stop me. And since I'm in the fight anyway, that's the extra risk that makes life worth living."_

_She leaned in and standing on her tiptoes, carefully slipped her hands into his. Slowly she moved closer and let their lips meet. His heart pounding in his chest, he opened his mouth slightly and deepened the kiss. His breathing seemed to interlock with hers as if they were connected at the same core. How could he have thought about giving her up?_

_Slowly Ginny pulled her way and he dropped his smile and pulled her back towards him. "I thought we could finish before we head back up."_

_"We could," she flashed him an impish smile, "as long as you settle one thing first."_

_"What?"_

_"You make your mind up and don't change it once you have. 'Cause if you want me out of this relationship I'll walk away now, but if you continue to kiss me we say screw the risks and don't have this conversation again."_

_"Screw the risks."_

Harry wrapped his right hand around his glass and smashed it down on the table. He watched as the glass shattered and bright red blood welled up from the cuts to his hand. Why had he said 'screw the risks' and laughed off any consequences? Ginny was right; they should have waited for the war to end before he had asked her to marry him.

Ginny's eyelids felt heavy as she glanced down at her watch. At half past five in the morning, it would be easy just to drift off to sleep for a couple of hours. She had never felt more exhausted, but something in her mind was keeping her awake, as if her body did not dare to let herself fall asleep, not even for a second. She shifted her body so she got a new ache in her back; she did not want to let her guard down, get hurt again or let anyone else touch her body. Come to think of it, why had they not been back in here to come and see her again? She thanked Merlin that nothing else had happened to her, but she was becoming more and more wary as the time passed.

She glanced down at the small black book that lay in the corner of her cell. Maybe they were waiting for that thing to take its effect again, before they came back in. Well it was not going to hurt her again and get into her mind. She slowly reached over and picked up the small leather bound diary. Carefully, she ran her hand across it, like she had down so many times before. Somehow, it felt different from the last time that she had held it. Her fingers fell into the hole that had been burnt through the middle of the damn thing by the Basilisk fang.

Looking at it now, it was hard to believe that this diary had caused so much pain and been so controlling. Gently she opened the ink-crusted cover to reveal the front page and felt a sudden urge to write in it. It had provided so many answers before and she could do with some answer to get out of the situation she had landed herself in. Tom had never failed to answer one of her questions before.

"No!"

She slammed the diary shut and attempted to tear the diary into two pieces. The leather was obviously harder to tear by an exhausted and weak body than she had first thought. Slowly, she opened the diary again and tore out the first page. The sound of the paper ripping from the book was deafening. Her eyes followed the piece of paper as it fell to the floor and her heart lifted, just as if she had eaten chocolate after encountering a Dementor. It was a case of mind over matter and then it had become easy, making her feel so much better. If only she could have been able to do that seven years ago.

A high pitch scream came from the wall on her right and through the grate. She quickly got to her feet, dropping the diary onto the floor. Ginny placed her ear against the damp wall, pressing close but being careful to avoid the drip from the long candle. The wall of the cell felt sticky and she could feel the muck rubbing off against her.

Another chilling scream echoed again and she shuddered. What the hell was happening in there? A terrifying laugh followed yet another scream. Her pulse raced and her breath quickened as she sank to the floor with her ear still against the wall. All the rumours were true and Jess was not an exception. It became harder to breathe as the horror of her situation closed around her. She pulled her legs protectively closer to her body and wrapped her hands around her knees, her whole body shaking.

She closed her eyes, thanking Merlin that it was not her in that room and there was a wall dividing her from that Death Eater. _Oh damn, that was an awful thing to think._ How could she look people in the eyes if she got out of here after thinking that? That could just as easily have been her. She was no stronger or more talented than the next witch. So why wasn't it? Why were they leaving her alone?

When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell to her engagement ring and she ran her fingertip across the ruby. Was it this little thing that was making all the difference? Was this the reason they were they staying away from her? Just because she was engaged? Could the old wives tales that she had heard growing up be true? Why should it have made any difference that she had said yes?

A laugh echoed through the air vent again. "So that's a blond, a brunette."

"And the red head is next door. Do you fancy a taste?"

She closed her eyes again and listened intently._ They can't hurt me. They can't hurt me,_ she whispered again in her head. _All you need to do, Gin, is stay strong and confident. I am not going to be a victim again. Besides, I might not be the redhead._ She scoffed a laugh, who was she kidding? Of course they were talking about her.

"You know she's Malfoy's," said the first voice in a thick Lancaster accent. "I wouldn't dare touch her before he does. I don't want to lose any body parts."

"You've got a point there. Poor sod, Goyle… he learnt that the hard way. But he was always kind of dense at school," a younger voice replied that sounded very familiar. "The way Malfoy goes with these girls it's hard to believe he's married."

"I've heard his wife is not too happy."

"Fine looking woman as well, Mrs Malfoy," said the familiar second voice. "So what's stopping Malfoy touching Weasley at the moment? She's such a pretty thing, used to turn heads as she walked down the Hogwarts corridors."

Ginny opened her eyes and held her breath. Whether it was good or bad, she was going to get her answer now. It seemed to take forever for the first man to answer. Why was it the most desperate you were for a response the longer it seemed to take to come?

"It's the ring."

"The what?"

"The fact the girl is engaged to Potter."

"I still don't understand."

"Seriously, Theodore, think about it. Once a man and a woman are engaged there are serious consequences if someone one tries to come between them, those consequences being a lack of any future enjoyment in such a nature of activities ever again. So, Malfoy's doing a bit of research first before he does anything. He is not going to risk his hobby for the sake of Potter's whore."

"So we wait?"

"Yes, we wait. And don't you touch her in the meantime. Besides, there's nothing wrong with a good Cruciatus Curse."

Ginny looked down at her ring through the dark as she felt her heart fill with hope. Who would have thought that something so small, precious and unique could be so powerful? He could not touch her; she was safe at least for the moment. Her heart rose, she was going to get through this without feeling those slimy hands on her again. She was going to be okay. Curses were nothing compared to that, she had felt them so many times before.

Slowly she let her eyes close as she rested her back against one of the cold walls. If he could not touch her then surely it would be okay to close her eyes for a couple of minutes.

_Harry's face floated into her mind as though he was standing right in front of her. He seemed so real that she thought she could touch him, and she felt her body warm as if she had been removed from this cold room and placed in front of a fire. She felt him collect her up into his strong arms and hold onto her so tightly, it was almost as if he never wanted to let her go again. Her whole body seemed to loosen as she relaxed into his arms._

_It felt wonderful to be his arms again. It was where she was a meant to be. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his chest._

_Looking up into his eyes she asked, "Are you real? You can't be. Are you really here?"_

_"I'm real, Gin. 'Cause I'm always in your heart," he replied in a soft voice, as he tipped her head gently upwards. "Like you are always in mine."_

_"I love you, Harry."_

_"I love you, too, Gin," Harry said. A small grin twisted onto his face and he added, "But you know what, Weasley?"_

_"What?"_

_"You look a real mess."_

_She laughed as her heart jumped. "Tell me something I don't know. But, I swear, Harry, I'm not going to tell them anything."_

_"I knew you wouldn't," he replied as he kissed her on the top of her forehead. "You're much stronger than them, Gin, and you're holding up so well. Weasley pigheadedness, they call it. Just remember you have something that none of them have. People that love you. So when you're struggling, just close you're eyes and I'll be there for you until I can get there personally myself."_

_"Harry, you can't," she said. She pulled away from him and untangled herself from his arms. "You can't risk it, Harry, you're what they want and you're far too important. You have a much bigger part to play in this than rescuing me from my stupidity. I'm not having you get hurt because of me."_

_"Screw the risk, Gin. Some things in life are worth it, and you are one of them. I love you and want you to be my wife," Harry said as he took her hand. "Just tell me where you are."_

There was a large bang as the door was flung open and a cold air entered the room. Her eyes flew open as she swiftly pulled her knees closer to her chest and tried to push herself further into the back corner of the room. She tucked her hands between her knees and chest, and with wide eyes, looked towards the door. Her heart pounded as a shiver ran down her spine. Though filled with dread, she forced herself to keep her eyes fixed on the tall figure in floor length black robes that was standing in the doorway to her cell.


	6. Chapter Five

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Five: Blood

Jerking awake, Harry forced his eyes open, roughly rubbing his eyes as she faded from his dreams. He closed his eyes again and tried to recapture the image of his fiancée, forcing the image of Ginny to float into his head. A chill ran down his spine as he saw her emerge in his mind's eye, confirming his worst fears.

Her face was long, drawn and pale with a spattering of deep blue bruises ribbing across it. Yet despite her weary appearance, she had still managed to flash him an impish grin and her eyes had glowed for the briefest of seconds. She had still managed to make an attempt to comfort him. But it did not seem right that even now Ginny's smile lit up her face when her whole body showed that she was hurt, it seemed so forced. The infamous acting skills she used so well. _What did you expect, Potter? She's being tortured because of you so she's hardly going to have a happy-go-lucky attitude where she believably laughed off the pain she is in._

It broke his heart to see her like that and know that there was nothing he could do to help her. He was helpless and unable to do anything while the person he loved was in so much pain. Tears started to well in his eyes; it felt like his heart was going to split in two. How could he lose someone that he loved so much? He had an empty feeling inside him that rose from the pit of his stomach, upwards, filling his body. This was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives; they should be celebrating now, not grieving and struggling to find answers.

All he knew was that Ginny was in trouble; she was hurt and needed him more than she was willing to let on. Stubborn to the core, just like always. Everyone thought that she was so strong; that she could handle anything that life threw at her. That's what she wanted people to think. She could handle pretty much anything as long as no one mentioned the name Tom Riddle. Although she pretended that it didn't affect her, if you knew what to look for, you only had to look at her face to see that she was lying. Upon mention of his name, her body would tense and she would give an involuntary shudder, withdrawing as her face paled and her brown eyes widened with a fear she sought to hide. Yet after a glance downward and a couple of breaths later, Ginny Weasley would regain her composure and no one would notice anything was wrong.

He had to do something; he could not let her stay like that any longer. He would not have been able to have let anyone stay captured, beaten, tortured and Merlin knows what else at the hands of Death Eaters. If he ever got hold of those bastards that had done this to her, he would struggle to maintain his resistance against the use of unforgivable curses. In truth, he was not sure that he would be able to take the route that those fighting on the side of justice and equality were meant to take.

His eyes fell on the clock again; _'Lost'. 'Lost'_ told you nothing helpful and just lead to endless waiting. Waiting was something that he had never been good at. He was built for action, not sitting around looking in books trying to find an answer. He fought against the rage and the urge to smash things that welled up inside him. Mrs Weasley did not need anymore of her mugs and glasses smashing. There had to be someone that could do something. After all, there were some of the most talented witches and wizards in Britain gathered in this kitchen.

Harry ran his hands through his messy, unkempt hair as he looked up at the ceiling as if he was asking it for help or words of comfort. On receiving no instructions from the ceiling, he brought his eyes level and met the brown ones opposite. His best friend had always been the source of so many answers before and continually been able to help him out when he wanted to charge headstrong into some form of action.

Hermione seemed to be able to keep a calm, objective sense of rationale as she managed to somehow keep her heart detached. He sometimes thought that Hermione was the strongest person he knew as she stopped to think about her actions and did not let emotion take over, just like she had done in their fifth year. Not that Hermione didn't care just as much as anyone else in this room, she just knew how to listen to her head. She was a realist that looked at all the possible options. And he had never needed her cool head as much as he needed it now.

Her eyes briefly meet his before glancing down at her watch for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last hour. He did not need to check his watch again to know that time was still going far too slowly. Every five minutes seemed to take an eternity as someone spoke to check the time, or reassure another that they would know about it if something had happened to Ginny because her clock hand would move from the position of _'Lost'. _They just had to accept that no news was good news until they could get the Order of the Phoenix to a meeting that had been called for the morning and the required forty-eight hours had passed to report her missing.

_Ginny is a fighter,_ he whispered to himself.

"Does everyone else make it quarter past seven?"

The group responded with a series of nods and muttered answers, each showing their own agreement. How could it have only just have gone past seven o'clock in the morning? It felt so much later. But then they had been sitting hopelessly around the kitchen table for around nine hours.

His green eyes briefly flicked to the other members of his large adopted family as he heard Mrs Weasley's muffled sob at the announcement of the time. All the faces in the kitchen had solemn expressions that did not suit the normally lively, chaotic and noisy home of The Burrow. There were tired red marks around eyes that had already shed many tears that night.

Harry bowed his head slightly. He had not really thought about how they were feeling inside, instead he had just focused on the state of nervous tension and fear that had engulfed his own body. But from the looks on their faces, he could not tell them that the Ginny he had seen had been bloody, battered and beaten. He could not add anything else to the misery they were suffering.

"Hermione?"

"Yes."

"How do we find her?" he asked. A sharp pain of guilt shot through his abdomen as nine other pairs of eyes joined his in looking to Hermione. He should not be putting his friend in this position, nor pinning all his hopes on her. "I don't mean to add any extra pressure, but you've always been able to work things out and we need you. What can we do? I'm open to any ideas."

Ron squeezed her hand and offered her an encouraging smile as his girlfriend's face flushed. "I believe in you," he said in a confident voice.

"Yes, Hermione, we are going to need your clear head and brain amongst the rash and stubborn Weasleys here," Mr Weasley said, a lost look in his eyes that Harry had never seen before as he almost pleaded with his youngest son's girlfriend. "Whatever you can do, even just offering a new perspective. I just want to… no, need to, find my baby girl."

Harry felt his heart jolt as Mr Weasley called Ginny his baby. Ginny would have flipped if she had heard anyone call her a child, let alone a baby. She liked to maintain and command a level of independence and spent hours protecting her worth and attempting to stop herself from being mollycoddled. Yet first and foremost she would always be the baby of the Weasley family and that could be seen on the pained look of the normally calm, but slightly eccentric, father.

"I'll do whatever I can, Mr Weasley," Hermione said earnestly, not showing any signs of the pressure that he would be feeling if they were all focusing on him for ideas. "I guess we could go over the facts again and see if they bring anything up. Where was Ginny heading when she left you, Harry?"

"Knockturn Alley."

"Knockturn Alley! Knockturn Alley! Why on earth would Ginny be going to that street?" Mrs Weasley exclaimed, suddenly turning her attention back to her children and scanning the room for guilty faces. "She knows how we feel about that street. Arthur?"

"Boys?"

"She was doing some shopping, collecting supplies for products," Fred explained, without looking at either of his parents and instead choosing to focus on the table. "But she should have been in and out of there in five minutes, max. The old hag we used is very reliable."

"Have you spoken to the hag since?" Harry found himself asking.

"Yeah. She said that Gin never showed up," Fred replied, as he glanced over at George. "The hag said that Ginny had stopped going to her for a couple of weeks."

"Chosen to find her own suppliers, instead. You know, Gin," George explained, continuing from Fred, "she had been doing it since the hag said something that she did not like."

"What was it?"

"That she was in danger," George said in a hollow voice. "That there were rumours floating all over Knockturn Alley that Death Eaters wanted her."

Silence descended on the room and Harry felt like slamming his fist down onto the table again as his gut wrenched. Ginny had known she had been in trouble and potentially in danger and just ignored it. He loosened the grip of his fist; that was exactly what he would have done.

How could he blame her?

"Did she say who from exactly?" Hermione asked as her eyes reddened. "Any name? Descriptions? Reasons? Anything that help us narrow it down at all?"

"No."

"Well, if it's definitely a Death Eater, we know its Malfoy," Ron said triumphantly as he got to his feet and grabbed one of the books in front of Percy. "We don't need to do the research, we just need to know where he's keeping her."

"We can't know that for sure, Ron. Although, I would not be surprised if it was him," Hermione said, as she tried the voice of reason and took Ron's hand. "We just don't have any proof and need to look at all the possibilities."

Ron slowly sat back down and kissed Hermione softly on the cheek, keeping a firm hold on her hand. Jealously sprang into Harry's heart; he would die to be doing that with Ginny right now. Looking upwards, he had to at least try to offer some ideas.

"What about Tom from the Leaky Cauldron? He was staring at Ginny when I arrived and she said he had been acting strangely."

"Or Bellatrix Lestrange," Bill offered. "Ginny was in the battle last month when her husband was killed."

"And then there's the Daily Prophet," Percy said in a dry voice, almost as if he did not want to find his sentence. "Look at the article this morning. There's a hit list of young witches that the Death Eaters want for reasons none of us want to think about." He paused before his voice descended to barely a whisper, "and if the Death Eaters have a list of names, Ginny's will be at the top of it. She's the perfect, high profile target."

Hermione wrapped her hand tightly in Ron's and buried her face against his shoulder. Through what Harry thought might have been a sob, he heard her muffled voice barely whisper, "we really need to talk to Jess."

Ginny stared unblinkingly into the unmoving grey eyes of the Death Eater standing before her. She fought to keep her breath steady as her heart pounded rapidly against her chest. Her breathing was one of the few things left that she had full control of, and she carefully took shallow breaths in an effort to minimise the pain she felt in her ribs every time she inhaled.

She realised they were probably broken, and in that case the only way to stop the pain would be to have them fixed… or stop breathing. She just needed to get out of here and then everything would be okay. Well maybe not okay, but much better than her current situation. And she could recover from this; she had to recover from this. If she wanted to get out from here and return to her home, Harry and her family, she just needed to ignore the pain. Carefully she bit on her bottom lip. _Focus on the little things and the big things don't hurt as much._

And any minute now, she was going to need all the strength that she could muster when she ran.

"Miss Weasley," hissed the drawling and chilling voice, "I am so sorry we kept you waiting, I will not be that inconsiderate again in the future."

"Malfoy," she uttered as she resisted the urge she felt from the pit of her stomach to kick him hard in the area of his trouser zip.

She was going to make that bastard pay for what he had done to her and all those other girls her age. But right now, if she wanted that to happen, she needed to keep a cool, calm head. And if she could just manage that, she was on her way out of here.

What she needed to do was think like they did.

She stayed crouched into her corner, and held her hands together and tucked between her knees and chest. She just needed to make herself appear as though she was helpless, with her wrists still roughly bound together. Make him believe that she was starved, weak and defenceless. He would raise his wand in a second if he thought that there was still enough strength and spirit left in her body to escape this pit and that she was going to run. As long as she could catch him off guard, she stood a chance.

He moved into the tiny room leaving barely thirty centimetres between them. "I trust you are enjoying your stay."

"The luxury living conditions, the rich food and drink, incredible company and the fantastic choice of reading material in your fine library," she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm and her face devoid of any emotion. "I can't think when I've had more fun."

"We Malfoys can afford the good things in life and always aim to please our pureblood company," he said, dropping his voice as he crouched down to her level. "And now I believe that it is your turn to do something to please us."

"What?" she spluttered before she could stop herself.

Her body started shake involuntarily and her eyes widened in disbelief. He had come down here to do what he had wanted to do to her all night. _That bastard is going to touch me and hurt me in the worst possible way anyone could. _Let his hand run along her thigh again, only this time he was going to undo the buttons on her slashed and torn jeans and force himself on her. _How sick was he? I'm young enough to be his daughter. Hell, I'm younger than his son is. What kind of twisted man got his kicks from raping a teenage girl?_

_Control your breath_, she reminded herself as she looked briefly into his eyes. _How could someone's eyes look so lustful and hungry with such a cold sense of detachment? _She was not going to take part in these sick fantasies. They would have to kill her first and she intended to get out of this hellhole somehow. She was going to marry Harry James Potter and would not die being used by Lucius Malfoy.

Holding her feet firmly to the ground, she let out a slow stubborn growl as her eyes flared, "Fuck you."

"That was the general idea."

"Well you are going to be very disappointed then, Mr Malfoy, because you can't touch me," she said with an air of confidence in her voice. "I'm engaged to someone who loves me, something I doubt you'll ever know. And that means that there is only one man that can touch me in that way and you're not him."

"You should never underestimate the uses and powers of spells, hexes, jinxes, curses and potions, girl," he said, as he moved his gloved hand towards her. Pushing open her mucky ripped shirt, he traced his hand along her breast as if he was trying to find her bar clasp. "And you are going to be with us for a long time. You, Miss Weasley, will be able to watch your precious Potter die and then come back to my bed. You see, my dear, that is one way to break both you and an engagement. All you need to do is kill one of the parties involved."

Ginny clasped her hands together tightly in an effort stop herself from slapping him. "You're lying."

"I never lie about matters such as this." An evil grin twisted across Lucius Malfoy's face as he stopped moving his hand. "Potter is mine, he will die at the hand of the Dark Lord before the night's out and help the rise of the Dark Order. With young wizards and witches like yourself being re-educated as the inevitable happens."

"And like I said before I am never going to help you, I'd sooner die," she spat with all the strength that she could, "and there's nothing you can do that will make me help you."

"You don't need to say anything or doing anything, just yet," he said softly, as he reached into a pocket of his cloak and pulled out an ancient looking dagger. With it's black leather handle and silver blade twisted like a snake, it appeared as evil as its owner, and Ginny knew the time had come.

"Screw you."

Quickly and forcefully she kicked out her foot, slamming it into his crotch and used all the weight and power she had as it made contact, just as the dagger touched her face. Blood gushed out of her left cheek as the blood coated dagger dropped to the floor next to the fallen Death Eater. She quickly rose to her feet, ignoring the feeling she had that her feeble knees were about to buckle due to the fact she had not used them in so long. She glanced down at Malfoy before hurdling over his crippled body.

_Just keep your focus and you are out of here, Gin._

"Draco!"

Keeping her head raised, she sprinted through the large dungeon that she had originally been dragged through yesterday when she had arrived. Pausing at the stairway, she held her ribs and tried to catch her breath. She scanned the room and her gaze fell on the closed door of the cell next to where she had been. Screams echoed in her mind. She could not escape and leave that girl in there to the Death Eaters … especially since it could easily have been her in that room. What kind of a Gryffindor was she? Saving just her own skin would be something that Tom would do and he had no control over her anymore.

Quickly she darted back to the door and pulled on the handle, silently cursing her lack of a wand where a whisper of '_Alohomora_' would be all that would be needed for the door to fly open. Her heart pounded as she frantically ran her fingers over the lock. _There must be something that I could use to open this door. Why hadn't I used grips in my hair yesterday?_ They would have been perfect … the tool she had used on many occasions to open the broom shed and borrow her older brothers' brooms.

"Draco!"

Did she dare go back to collect that dagger from the pit? It would definitely work without a doubt, but it would land her in the clutches of a rapidly recovering Lucius Malfoy. She needed to do something; surely she could not bank on having much more time. Her breath quickened as her sense of panic started to increase.

_Come on, Gin, think about it._

Moving away from the door and slammed her side against it. Her body bounced back so quickly, it was almost as if the door had hidden springs, and she landed in a heap on the floor. Tears welled in her eyes and she tried to shake them off. _Well, that was well done, Gin. It did not work on your door so it's hardly likely to work on this one. How stupid are you? _

"Draco!"

_Come on, Gin!_ Ignoring the pain in her body, she pulled herself up to her knees and ran her hand along the crevasses of the cold, dirty stone floor. Surely one of the girls that had been kidnapped had to have worn some kind of hair clip, bracelet or necklace that had fallen off in the struggle. Something that she could use now to help. A faint smile blossomed as her fingers brushed along a sharp pointed metal clip.

"_Petrificus Totalus_."

_Crap. You know that you're an idiot, right, Gin? You should have run and got the hell out of here. Why did you have to be so ruddy noble? That's the one thing that you said to Harry, 'Stop being noble and make sure you come back to me. There's a time to fight and you should fight, but don't put yourself in pointless danger. Remember Riddle likes to play with our minds.'_

As her body went rigid, she tumbled forwards clumsily and hit the floor with a dull thump. She fought to remain conscious, but felt the edges of her reality begin to slip away as she heard harsh footsteps draw closer.

How much more could her body cope with before it collapsed and gave out for good? Was it wrong to know right now that it was soon? A sense of dread filled her empty stomach and reverberated through her. It was going to be a while yet; Malfoy wanted her alive.

"You must understand, Miss Weasley, that I always get what I want, there really is no point in settling in life." He knelt next to her paralysed body and placed the cold dagger's blade, already coated with her blood, against her throat.

_Go on do it, _she thought, _at least it would end the pain and stop you from using me to hurt anyone else._ She had read somewhere that a slit throat was a quick way to die. He held the dagger there for what seemed to be an eternity while her fear rose and her body inwardly shook.

Dumbledore had always said that to the well-trained mind that death was the next great adventure. Hopefully her mind was well trained. _Well,_ _here's to the next great adventure then._

"What you need to understand, Miss Weasley, is that none of this is about right or wrong, good or evil or any deluded ideas that your blood traitor parents may have taught you," he said calmly as he moved the dagger from her neck and cut some strands of her hair. "It's about power, the power I have over you and your father. Don't you forget that, girl."

Harry's eyes, along with everyone else's, were drawn to the fireplace as, with a roar, the flames turned to emerald green and rose as high as the kitchen mantelpiece. As the fire died down, in its place was left a pretty teenage girl with soot-covered blond hair, engulfed in a large black cloak. As she stepped out of the fire grate, a couple of people rose to join Fred as he offered his seat to the young woman several years his junior. She smiled gratefully at the Weasley twin as she took the chair and almost collapsed into it.

She had completely changed since Harry had last seen her. Her face looked worn and tired, much older than her eighteen years. The dark rings under her eyes made it appear as if she had not slept in weeks. Her face had paled and her hair was flat looking, both dull and lifeless. But perhaps the most frightening thing about her was the haunted look that lay behind her eyes, as if she was still reliving her nightmare. She was nothing like the girl that he had known at Hogwarts, the girl who had spent hours arguing with his fiancée as he and Ron both tried not to laugh.

_What had they done to her?_ He had seen her just a few months ago and she had looked stunning, with many wizards trying to ask her out as she gave them encouraging smiles. Now, her whole body was covered, instead of wearing the type of clothes that he could remember, clothes that tended to show her naval. Her bright blue eyes were dead and still. She had lost the very smile that Ginny had claimed was infuriating.

"Thank you," she said in barely more than a whisper and tears started to flow out of her eyes as she looked towards Mrs Weasley. "I was so sorry to hear about Ginny, Mrs Weasley, Mr Weasley."

"It's something we've just all got to get through and if I know my little girl she'll come back to us. She's a fighter, gets it from her mother."

"Yeah dad," Fred said, trying to lighten the mood a bit as he took the spare chair in between Penelope and Bill, "Ginny's probably talked at them all so much that they just want to let her go by now. It will be the only time that we are grateful that you can never shut her up."

"That or she has sent bogies flying around their heads," George agreed, from the opposite side of the table. "She'll come walking into the house in a bit, smiling, proclaiming innocence, wondering what we were all worried about and stating that she's heading back out into the fight."

"We can only hope so, son."

The kitchen fell quiet yet again and Harry felt like screaming at the top of his voice, if only to offer some noise, but settled in forcing himself to smile at Fred and George's comments. They were dealing with the situation the only way they knew how and they were right. It was not easy to shut Ginny up; she could talk the back end off a horse, as her mouth would move non-stop. He dropped his eyes as he scanned the room. Jessica was the only one who had not let any hint of a smile cross her lips.

"How are you, Jess?" Hermione asked. "Are you okay or getting there yet?"

"Yes," she replied in a firmly controlled, almost forced voice, "I'm fine, or at least will be in time."

Hermione was the one in the Weasley's kitchen that knew Jessica Stevens the best. According to Ron, the two female prefects had spent hours talking at meetings about pointless rules, while he barely stayed awake. Hermione had also been the one who used to try to defend Jessica's actions to Ginny as they tried to calm the fiery redhead down after a disagreement with her classmate.

Yet, despite not knowing Jessica nearly as well as Hermione or Ginny, he was sure that she was not fine. She just did not seem like the 'know-it-all' that he knew. She was far too quiet and distant. The Jessica he knew would be interfering in other people's business instead of keeping her mouth firmly closed shut and only talking if she was asked a direct question.

"It's okay, not to be okay," Hermione said earnestly, as Ron tightened his hold on her. "It's okay to feel less than fine after what has happened to you."

"Seriously, I'm fine, Hermione," Jessica replied. "Now, how can I help you?"

Harry found himself respecting the bravery and spirit she was showing when it probably would have been easier for her to hide away and cry.

"Tell us how you escaped? How Ginny might get out or we might get to her," Harry explained, with a pleading look in his eyes. She was the one person that could provide the answer to some of the millions of questions that were banging around his mind. "Where is she being kept, because it's bound to be the same place as you were?"

"I've no idea where I was. At St Mungo's they said the Portkey had been sent from Wiltshire," she replied in a sad tone. "I know where I _think_ I was, but there is no evidence. I was stunned and did not regain consciousness until I was in a dungeon surrounded by Death Eaters."

"Shouldn't we wait for Dumbledore and the Order?" Percy asked in a tentative voice.

"I can't wait anymore," Harry said stubbornly, glaring briefly at the rule abiding Weasley. "Go on, Jess."

"It's basically what I told the Daily Prophet, only they censored it a little," she explained. She stopped, took a breath and appeared as if she was trying to draw on some inner source of confidence and courage. "They rambled on about the purity of blood and how I was a blood traitor that they needed to re-educate. They said they would teach me to respect my bloodline. I spent hours under the Cruciatus Curse, before they…."

Her mouth seemed to dry up and Harry's heart sank. "They raped you."

Jessica hardly moved her head but offered a small nod as fresh tears appeared on her white cheeks. "Yes. And that made me dread to think what they are doing to Ginny. Because I'm not Harry Potter's girlfriend. Whatever they did to me, it will be ten times worse for Ginny. She is and has always been much more important than me."

Harry's stomach churned as guilt overwhelmed him. An objective third person had agreed that he had made things worse for Ginny. They should never have said 'screw the risks' or he should not have even thought about romance until Voldemort was long gone. Especially when the person he loved was Ginny.

"But they can't do that to Ginny," Mrs Weasley said. As she spoke a look of understanding seemed to fall on all of the faces apart from his and Jessica's, while he regretted yet again not growing up in the Wizarding world. "Ginny's engaged, the only way they could do that to her would be to…"

"To murder you, Harry," Hermione completed Mrs Weasley's sentence that had been left hanging in the air.

The guilt that had knotted itself around his stomach started to ease a little. The ring that was sitting on her finger and the love he felt for Ginny was going to serve as her protection. Somehow that just felt right. Ginny was going to be okay and survive this, and the next tears the family shed would be at their wedding. As long as he could get to her soon, things were going to work out okay because he had no intention of dying.

"Well they can't touch her then," Harry said loudly, as if announcing it to the world, "because they are not going to kill me. I asked Ginny to marry me and that's what is going to happen."

"Too right, mate," Ron agreed as he flashed him a grin.

Hermione also smiled at him, before turning back to Jessica. "So I guess that leaves one question left. How did you escape? Any clues or hints that we can work with?"

"Someone let me out."

Ron's mouth dropped. "Someone helped you in a Death Eater's camp. Who? Snape's gone and we don't have another spy. Do we have another spy?"

"I don't know," Jessica told him gently. "I think it was a man due to his build and his voice, but he kept his robes and mask on throughout."

"Did you recognise his voice?" Hermione pressed. "Accent?"

"It seemed very familiar," Jessica explained in her own Welsh accent. "I just couldn't place it, but I am pretty sure I've heard it before. I was just focusing on the Portkey that they had given me and getting out of there as fast as I could. I did not even think about it until I was lying in a bed at St Mungo's."

"Understandable," Hermione muttered, as Harry could not help but feeling slightly disappointed. "Do we have a new spy in there that we don't know about?"

"I hope so," Ron said in a protective older brother tone. "Gin needs all the help that anyone can give her, not that you didn't."

"It's okay," Jessica replied, looking straight at him. "I don't want anyone to go through what I did, least of all Ginny. We may not agree on anything at all, but Ginny is a talented witch and, I would like to think, a friend."

"I'm sure she thinks the same about you," Hermione said, ignoring the sceptical looks given by Ron and Harry. They all knew that the last word that Ginny would use in connection with Jessica Stevens' name, was friend. "Who do you think it was?"

"Looking at the evidence—"

Hooting interrupted Harry's thoughts and Jessica's answer as an owl landed on the kitchen table. Mr Weasley quickly untied a letter from the tawny owl's leg and it rapidly took flight again as if it had been commanded to leave the instant that the scroll had been delivered. Harry watched the owl disappear into the distance as Mr Weasley stared at the letter.

"It's for Harry."

"Be careful, mate."

Harry quickly took the letter from Mr Weasley, and ignoring the warnings, unrolled the scroll to reveal a scribbled note. He watched as a lock of red hair, a phial of blood and a broken piece of wand crashed onto the table. His heart pounding, he carefully touched the fingertips of one hand into the blood now spreading in a small pool on the tabletop. In the stunned silence of the room, the sound of the parchment crumpling in Harry's fist was deafening.


	7. Chapter Six

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Six: A Death Eater's Son

Smoothing out the wrinkled parchment, Harry finally read the few hastily scribbled words written in an unfamiliar hand.

_666 Knockturn Alley, Twelve Noon, Alone_

As he read them over more carefully, his mouth felt dry and he swallowed hard in an attempt to dislodge the lump that seemed to be stuck in his throat. He passed the piece of scroll back to Mr Weasley feeling that as Ginny's father, he had a right to see what it said. Not that six words offered any comfort or clues at all. When Harry glanced down at his watch to see how long he had before having to be in Knockturn Alley, a feeling of bittersweet nostalgia washed over him as the watch was one that Ginny had given to him a couple of months ago as a birthday present. Despair settled into the pit of his stomach as he saw that he had only forty minutes before he had to be there.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and before anyone could stop him, headed towards the stairs. He just had to get out of that room. The kitchen at The Burrow was normally warm and full of laughter, but it was far from that now; a state of glum depression and an increasing level of desperation had altered the atmosphere and increased Harry's sense of despair.

He just could not sit there for the next forty minutes and listen to them telling him it was a trap. He knew that it was obviously a trap, but he couldn't summon up any part of him that cared. He was sick of doing nothing and this meant that he was doing something, no matter how stupid it might be. And he needed to do something right now, he could hardly ignore this note. It would give him a chance to help Gin and get her out of this mess.

Harry wrapped his hand around the wand in his pocket as he took the first step leading up to the bedrooms. He was not sure what it was, but he always felt better when he could feel the wood of his wand in his fingers. Ignoring the protests and mutters coming from the kitchen, Harry continued up the staircase.

"Harry?"

Turning his head, Harry addressed his friend standing at the bottom of the stairs. "Just give me a minute, Hermione. I'm fine, but I just need some time."

His pace quickened as he climbed the stairs, but he felt his feet bringing his body to an instinctive pause as he reached the third floor. He turned automatically, as if he had intended to go there all along, and placed his hand on the doorknob of the first door on the left, directly opposite Mr and Mrs Weasley's bedroom. Ginny was often known to loudly and vocally complain that she had the nearest room to her parents and joked (or at least he hoped she was joking) that this meant she heard noises in the night-time that no daughter should.

_This is forbidden territory, a real no man's land_. He had wanted to push open this door so many times, but a respect for Mr and Mrs Weasleys' wishes had stopped him every time he headed upstairs. Since officially getting together with Ginny two years ago, this had become the one room in The Burrow in which he was not allowed.

His time with Ginny was policed as the whole of the Weasley family started to watch him like hawks to make sure that he looked after their baby. This meant that nothing more than a couple of kisses were permitted until they had exchanged vows. In fact, Ginny would love to tease him and the rest of her family whenever she was given a chance. She would send over her trademark mischievous grin and her eyes would twinkle across the room, whilst Ron tried to dampen the mood with making loud gagging noises that were only partly put on at the thought of a passionate embrace between his little sister and oldest friend.

Slowly, he pushed open the door, which creaked as it spoke in Mrs Weasley's voice. '_No boys allowed in here, that means you, Harry._' He smiled, despite himself and the misery that filled his body. Mrs Weasley had placed the charm on her daughter's door after the summer of his fifth year when she had learnt that Ginny had had her first boyfriend. It had resulted in an initial fit of hysterics, followed by indignation, especially when the charm had been changed to refer to Harry by name.

He looked into the box room of the Weasley home. Ginny, as the youngest member of the family and the only one who had not had to share her room with a sibling at some point, had been allocated the smallest room. The small bedroom contained barely enough room for a single bed, a battered wardrobe that despite its magical qualities was over spilling with excess clothes, and a mismatched chair and desk. The room was in the very mess that caused many a disagreement between the two Weasley women. The pile of clothes on the bed and the wardrobe door flung open indicated that Ginny's bedroom was in the exact state she had left it the previous morning.

Harry carefully placed one foot across the threshold, just in case Mrs Weasley had added any more charms to this door like she had threatened to do as soon as Ginny had left Hogwarts. Slowly, he stepped into the room and breathed a sigh of relief as he was not thrown back out the room, nor was anything chasing him down the stairs and out into the garden. The relief was quickly replaced by a sense of nerves as his stomach fluttered; this was Ginny's domain.

He made his way over to the desk, stepping over the shoes that littered the floor in his search. She had not been wearing it when he had meet up with her yesterday, so she must have left it here. He ran his hand along her desk and his eyes darted up and down as he looked at the few items of jewellery she owned. Ginny had never been fond of wearing too much jewellery and had just a few selective pieces that meant a great deal to her. Carefully, he picked up a delicate golden necklace with a small red ruby at its base, the first thing he had ever really given her, using the excuse of it being a good luck charm for her Quidditch performances.

_A seventeen-year-old Harry landed his Firebolt to the floor, still clutching the beating golden snitch in his right hand. He glanced over his shoulder to see Jack and Andrew, who had vastly improved through experience and extra practice over the last two years, and whose performance, next to Ron's transformation, had become remarkable. Although the two beaters were still prone to the odd mistake, they could now be trusted to accurately target the other team about ninety-nine percent of the time. _

_Once again, Gryffindor had put together a strong team that were the favourites to win the cup for the fourth successive time and the third year running. It always felt great to beat Slytherin, but a score line of three and twenty to forty made it feel even better, especially with everything going on outside Hogwarts. Although he was honest enough to admit that the high victory had come from the form of their three chasers: Natalie McDonald, Samantha Waddle and last year's leading goal scorer, Ginny Weasley._

_Like usual, Ginny was the last person to land just by the Slytherin keeper's goalposts after she had done a couple of circuits of the pitch and mud splattered upwards. She was always reluctant to come back to the ground and the reality of life at the end of a match. It was so much easier to stay in the air and think about Quidditch, forgetting for a couple of hours that there was a war going on._

_He shot her a smile as she slowly walked over towards him, holding her old second hand broomstick in her left hand and letting her hair out of its ponytail with her right. He felt his heart jump; there was something about Ginny that set his insides cart wheeling. When he had told Hermione a couple of weeks ago, she had said that it was because he was falling in love and he guessed that made sense. He found himself waking up thinking about Ginny Weasley and went to sleep with his thoughts purely focused on her. Despite the war, Ginny always managed to make him smile._

_"You took your sweet time in catching that snitch, Potter."_

_Harry let out a small laugh. Anyone would think she wanted to be doing something else instead of playing Quidditch with the tone of her voice. "It's because I wanted to give you a chance to run up the score, Weasley."_

_"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, it's belting it down. I think you're just getting rusty," she claimed as she raised her eyebrows. Rain fell onto her face as she offered him a small smile and slipped her right hand into his left one, squeezing it. "Maybe we need to get some extra practice in."_

_"What with the DA, Occlumency, extra lessons with Vance, NEWT's and Ron's daily Quidditch practices?" he questioned as he offered her a small shrug. "Sorry, Gin, but I haven't got the time."_

_Ginny dropped her eyes to look downwards. "Not even for me."_

_"Okay, maybe for you," Harry said as the snitch beat powerfully in his right hand in a similar fashion to the way that his heart was beating against his rib cage. "I see you're wearing the necklace."_

_She smiled. "Wouldn't want to let you down."_

_"'Course not," he smiled. "So, are we joining the party to celebrate in the tower tonight?"_

_"Hey, Potter?" _

_Harry turned his head to see the familiar swagger as Draco Malfoy approached them. The rain around them seemed to intensify. He instinctively tightened his hold on Ginny's hand as he fought back a smile at the frown on the young Death Eater's face. Why did the git have to show his face now when he wanted to spend some precious time alone with his girlfriend? Because he did it every single year, replied a dull response in his head._

_"Not again," Ginny muttered as she turned to face Malfoy, pulling her hand out of Harry's to leave him grasping onto thin air, "this happens every year. You'd think he would be used to losing by now."_

_"What do you want, Malfoy?"_

_Draco smirked. "I was wondering if you'd read the Prophet today?"_

_Harry let go of the snitch and it fluttered into the air before the golden ball made its way back to its box, as he automatically pushed Ginny behind him, causing her to glare at him as she slipped. The Daily Prophet had reported the aftermath of an unsuccessful battle between members of the Order of the Phoenix and a large group of Death Eaters last night. The Wizarding newspaper had listed the names of several deaths, the majority of whom had children currently at Hogwarts. A bang of anger filled his insides, that git was going to brag about it._

_"Shut it, Malfoy."_

_"I guess you should get all the enjoyment out of winning a stupid game while you can," Malfoy said in a dry voice as his eyes lit up. "It's not going to be long before it's her they are writing about or her blood traitor parents, unless, as her history suggests, she joins us."_

_"Leave Ginny out of it, this is between us. She's innocent."_

_Ginny pushed him out of the way as anger seemed to crackle through her hair. "I'm not innocent, Harry."_

_"You are compared to him, Gin."_

_"How can someone who opened…"_

_Within seconds Ginny had whipped her wand out of her inside pocket and before Malfoy could finish his sentence, she had thrown a hex at him. A satisfied smile emerged on Harry's lips as he looked at the Death Eater with bogies flying and attacking his face for the third time in as many years. He couldn't help it; he let out a small laugh as he watched Draco struggle against his girlfriend's Bat Boggy Hex, but he failed to notice that her back had stiffened and her eyes were flaring dangerously._

_Ginny quickly regained her composure as she crossed her arms, but the growl in her voice showed that she was angry with him. "It's sweet that you are trying to protect me, but I really don't need it."_

_"But I just wanted to help," he offered in a mild protest. "I like taking care of you when you let me."_

_Whether Ginny was going to melt or exchange an infuriated and annoyed retort, he never found out as Professor McGonagall's shrill voice broke through any answer that she could give. "WEASLEY!"_

_She sighed and rolled her eyes as she appeared to bite her lip. "I'll see you in the common room in a bit, Harry."_

_He watched as she adopted a look of surprised innocence and straightened her face so that you could not tell what she was thinking. Harry fought back a laugh; how could she attempt to claim innocence this time? She shot him a slight grin that clearly said_ "you thought Draco Malfoy had got what he deserved"_ as she helplessly shrugged her shoulders and dutifully followed her head of house back to the castle. _

_Harry found himself copying the shrug as he saw Ron running over towards him with the tips of his ears glowing red. Maybe she was right and she did not need him to play the role of her knight in shining armour. She was more than capable of looking after herself._

_"What happened?" _

Harry carefully pocketed the necklace, hoping that it would give him the strength that he needed as he imagined her wearing it. He could not help but feel a smile emerging. Ginny had made a point showing that she was a more than capable match for any Malfoy. And that was going to be no different now, especially if he had anything to do with it.

Ginny was not Jessica Stevens; she was so much more and was going to get out of there. She was mischievous, smart and had grown up with enough brothers to know how to protect herself. His smile grew; within a couple of hours they would be reunited.

"You need to eat," came a cold drawling voice. "You must be starving and we can't have you dying of hunger or thirst before we're done with you."

Ginny glared at him; she had spent too much time in the presence of Mad-Eye Moody to even consider eating anything that a known Death Eater had given her. 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE.' She was not going to make things easy for them, nor help keep herself alive so that they could do whatever the hell they liked with her. They would have to hex her or force a potion down her throat. She was not going to touch anything they gave her.

She narrowed her eyes on the young Death Eater before her. His cold grey eyes were alive as they meet hers and he had that snide grin on his face again with that bloody blond hair in its perfect shape. She had had so many battles with him, but that was to be expected with one of Riddle's key followers' only son. _He was a spineless git that did whatever his father instructed him to do and she was a passionate pigheaded Weasley that did what she thought was right, no matter the cost. _And the current cost was her still sitting in this pit.

How Dumbledore had made him Head Boy at Hogwarts two years ago amazed her. She knew that Dumbledore saw the best in people and trusted where many other people would not. _But really, Draco Malfoy? A boy who became a Death Eater in his sixth year at Hogwarts? _

The Malfoy-Weasley animosity had dated back to the seventeenth century. In fact, it could be pinpointed to the day when Elizabeth Weasley, formerly Elizabeth Malfoy, and her husband had allowed their oldest son, Richard, to marry a Muggle in 1693. Elizabeth's father, Julius Malfoy, had disowned his youngest child and her family, ultimately leading to the end of a long reign of marriages between the Malfoys and Weasleys, two of the oldest pureblood Wizarding families. And since the 4th November 1693, the strength and amount of loathing had passed down from generation to generation.

There had become a passing hatred and an unwritten law about marriages during a couple of centuries. Weasleys and Malfoys just didn't talk to each other, let alone consider marriage. The loathing between the two families had intensified in other periods when the level of animosity took a life of its own. Such as the years since Riddle's first rise during the 1970's where feelings and flags were nailed to the post.

Malfoys were Death Eaters.

Weasleys were Blood Traitors.

"Eat."

Ginny felt her stomach rumble as she stared defiantly back. It was almost as if a spell had hit her as a wave of hunger ran through her body. How was she supposed to attempt another escape if she stopped eating altogether, making her incapable of using her legs and forcing her body to shut down?

Slowly she stretched her right hand forward and the dry bread fell into it. Carefully, she rolled the bread around in her two hands. It was dry and stale, and she was actually surprised that there was no mould growing on it. It had to be over a couple of weeks old. Slowly and carefully, she split it in two and brought it to her eyes to try and detect any discolouring before lowering it to her nose. It seemed to be okay.

As she broke a small piece off the roll she noticed the younger Malfoy offer her a small snide smile. _This was what he wanted,_ and she never did exactly what anyone wanted, let alone what a Malfoy wanted. For her to build up her strength and he would run straight to that bastard of a father, telling him that she was fine and ready for whatever he wanted to do with her. She ignored the cry in her stomach; she did not want a strengthening potion nor any food. She'd take her chances of an escape without them.

She mustered all of the strength she had left in her and took a deep breath. She flung the bread back at him so that it hit the Death Eater in the stomach.

Draco Malfoy laughed as he kicked the bread back at her, almost as if it was a Muggle football. "I know Gryffindors are known for their stupidity, but I never thought they would turn down food when they were starving."

"Get lost, Malfoy."

"Play nice, Weasley. Your stomach must be aching in pain by now," he drawled as she felt her stomach shake and bit her lip. "I could help you out."

"A Malfoy helping a Weasley?" she mocked as her stomach lurched yet again and she let out a hollow laugh. _Is he seriously expecting and asking me to trust him? Well, Puffskein's might fly._ "Do you really need a history lesson? I thought you were reasonably intelligent. Malfoys don't help or trust Weasleys and vice versa. Meaning that I would not turn to you for anything, let alone help, if you were the last man alive."

Draco leaned against the door as his stance seemed to relax and an air of smug confidence surrounded him. He yawned as his voice adopted its familiar idle tone. "Have you ever wondered why?"

"What? No. Why would I?"

"Just thought you might, I thought you were reasonably intelligent as well."

Ginny shifted her back slightly as she changed her position so that she had to tilt her head slightly to be able to look at him. She needed to stay on guard and on the top of her game and if that required forcing herself to be uncomfortable, then so be it.

Her head was spinning and her mind was all over the place. Actually, it felt like her brain was a pair of eggs that had been smashed in Madam Pomfrey's demonstration after the night in which they had smuggled some Fire Whiskey and Ice Vodka, a lethal combination, into the Gryffindor tower after their final OWL exam. She and three of her friends had stayed up in their dormitory, only for Jessica 'perfect prefect' Steven's to dob her into McGonagall the next morning. They had all received a long lecture, a week's worth of detentions and a demonstration on how they could mess with their minds if they were not careful.

Well, she did not need alcohol to mess with her mind, distort her ideas and play with her feelings. Draco Malfoy was doing that just fine without any external help.

"Get to your point, Malfoy."

"Just think how powerful a Malfoy-Weasley union could be. That is, of course, if you reconsider your position on the importance of blood and try to save your own birthright."

"There are a couple of problems with that, Draco dear," she said as she offered him a sickly sweet smile. "The most important thing being I'm engaged to Harry and there is also the fact that I hate you and everything you believe in."

"I thought I told you to play nice, I mean I do know who Dumbledore's spy is."

Her ears naturally pricked upwards, her eyes brightened and her mouth itched as if it wanted to smile, but she fought it to keep her face blank. There was a spy from the Order of the Phoenix in here. Now she thought about that, it made sense. Rumours of the Death Eater activities were rife and Dumbledore would not let them fight that alone.

The Head Teacher would have spent time finding new spies especially after Snape was unearthed just over two years ago. No wonder in the last four years the Head Boy or Head Girl had come from Slytherin and was a Death Eater's child. Three of those school years providing a Gryffindor-Slytherin double act, the most controversial being that of Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy, as the strength of unity was stressed. The Order of the Phoenix was building up as many spies as it was frontline fighters.

"Are you going to tell me who it is or are you just going to try and mess with my mind?"

"You sound tired, Ginevra, after you eat you should try and get some sleep. You'll need your strength in a bit."

"No, I won't. I have already said that I won't be cooperating with any of you. How many times do you need to hear that, Malfoy?" she said in a weary voice as depression started to get the better of her and she shifted her body yet again. "So either you spit it out now or you can just forget about it. I just don't know anymore, but I can't play any more games. So I guess if it helps for once in your life you can see me as not just a Weasley with freckles and red hair and I'll try to see you as more than Lucius Malfoy's son. We are people in our own right and not just what our parents want us to be. Come on, Draco, there had to be a reason why Dumbledore placed his trust in you."

"So good with your propaganda, Weasley, but what you fail to understand is that I know what you are talking about more than you will ever know. So save your speeches for people that need them."

"Then help me out. Put me in contact with the spy," she said, hating the pleading quality in her voice, but it felt like they were all she had left. "If you are worth an ounce of what Dumbledore must have thought you were, you'd tell me."

"And here was I admiring your strength and spirit, but I do believe that you are now begging."

"No, I'm not," she snapped in a defensive tone.

"Good," he replied in a dry tone, "I don't like being disappointed and it would be a bit of an anti-climax. And I must confess I was beginning to think that a Weasley would break the habit of a lifetime and beg."

"Only in your dreams."

"Often."

"Just get lost," Ginny growled again as her eyes narrowed. "I mean it's obvious you're not going to help, so just bugger off, 'cause I can't see a point in your still being in here."

"If you say so," Draco said in his bored tone as he pushed the bread and water back towards her. "Just so that you know the other girl was long gone and in St. Mungo's before you made your foolish attempt to escape."

Her heart plummeted as she watched him leave the room, the door slamming shut. As the door banged closed the noise bounced around the room and it felt like something had hit her in the chest and forced it to tighten. She struggled to breathe as her lungs seemed to shrink and her eyelids fell under the weight of tiredness. Slowly she let out a long, deep breath.

_You're an idiot, Gin._

_A complete and utter idiot. You could have been long gone, clear and away from this dump but you had to be noble. You had to run back to help an invisible girl who had already disappeared. So you spent valuable pointless time struggling to open that damn door for no reason whatsoever. You should have just run up those stairs and not looked back. You could have been home by now, soaking in a long hot bath with mum fussing over you and about to disappear into Harry's arms._

She let out a hollow laugh. That showed how bad things had become when she wanted to be fussed over by her mother. Boy, she must be going delusion

Slowly she hit the back of her head several times against the cell wall. A soft dull throb echoed through her head. She did not want to think anymore. She wanted to switch off her brain. She did not want to know that she should have just kept running and that there was no reason to try and help the invisible, already escaped captive out. She had never seen another girl, yet she had insisted on sprinting back to help her out.

She let her head loll onto her right shoulder as she pulled her knees upwards. There was no point in fighting sleep any longer. After all, things could hardly get much worse and if Draco was telling the truth, she would need her strength.

Harry descended the stairs and walked through the kitchen, only pausing to grab his cloak off a chair. He offered a slight nod to Mr Weasley and without speaking to anyone or waiting for them to talk to him, he headed straight into the garden. He just wanted to be alone and could not bear to spend much more time looking to their series of depressed faces that mirrored his own any longer. Anyway, Hermione would only spend the time trying to talk him out of going. He wrapped his cloak over his shoulders and disappeared outside.

The Burrow's garden was large, overrun and one of his favourite places to be. Laughter almost grew straight from in between the weeds and the long grass that needed cutting. There were large trees around the walls and plants over spilling from the flowerbeds, as well as the huge green pond filled with frogs in which each family member with the exception of Mrs Weasley had been dumped in at one point.

His eyes followed a pack of garden gnomes climbing over the wall to get back into the garden. It felt comforting to know that despite everything that was going on in the world, some things would never change. The garden would stay overgrown, as there always seemed to be more important things to take care of. Only when they had been growing up, those more important things had not really been that important looking back in retrospect. Homework, childhood fights and Quidditch practices were just not that important in the grand scheme of things. Mr Weasley would always find the gnomes funny and take a soft approach to them. Mrs Weasley would always yell at her children, telling them to de-gnome the garden for her, only for them to reluctantly agree to do it or risk facing their mother's wrath.

A small smile formed on his lips as the number of gnomes grew in the garden. He could just see Ginny spinning as she built up speed and threw a gnome into a nearby field. Before she would turn around, flashing him and her older brothers an innocent looking smile, shrugging her shoulder while challenging them to do better as she 'was only a little girl and they were big strong boys'. Only for a smile to be replaced by an impish grin the longer it took them to beat her as she proceeded to tease them all. He knew her every move, it was almost as if he had spent hours memorising her every action without knowing it. So much so that he just needed to close his eyes and he could visualise her movements and see her standing before him right now.

He grabbed a gnome and threw his arm backwards so far and violently that his shoulder nearly pooped out of its socket and threw the gnome some fifty yards.

"There you go, Gin. Beat that!"

His heart lurched, _she could have probably have beaten that too_. Ginny had a number of tactics to make sure that she won, not many of them fair, but he never seemed to find a reason to object, especially if it involved their lips locking. Since he had started dating Ginny he had found that he could be easily bought. Maybe it was because he had not grown up with six older brothers, but he found it much more enjoyable to let her win, whether it was throwing gnomes or deciding on a place to eat. He found it had never disappointed him yet.

_Don't worry, Potter, she will be back by your side by the time the sun sets tonight, making you complete again. And tomorrow she will be groaning loudly, rolling her eyes and pleading innocence as her mother sends her out into the garden. Then she'll fling her own gnomes fifty feet._

He let out a small sigh. _Don't kid yourself, Harry. Even if you do manage to get her back in a couple of hours, things aren't going to be the same, not for a long time, especially after what Jessica had said._ He just had to hope and pray that the Ginny that had disappeared down that street would be the same one or as near as possible to the same one that came back to them all. That they had not hurt her too much, played with her mind or touched her. _But at least getting her back would be a start._

"Harry."

Quickly, he turned around to see an old man with a long mane of white hair that ran down his back and a beard that fell well past his knees. His mentor always seemed to have a twinkle in his eyes and his face glowed, while his expressions and movements never gave away his old age. Yet today he looked tired and old with an expression written across his face that he had only seen once before. The night in his fifth year at Hogwarts when Sirius had died. The night when he had been forced to realise that the Hogwarts Headmaster could not fix everything and did worry and showed the occasional sign of weakness and age.

After all, Albus Dumbledore was only human just like everyone else, no matter what people seemed to think.

"Professor," he said curtly, although he kept his distance.

He had never been able to call Professor Dumbledore, Albus, no matter how many times he had been invited to. Respect for the older man would always keep him calling the Hogwarts Headmaster, Sir, Professor or Professor Dumbledore, but never Albus.

"Harry," said the elderly man as he gestured to the door, radiating power, "do come inside, the Order is here and your presence is required in the kitchen."

"Sorry, Professor, but I'm really not interested," Harry explained as his hand automatically went to seek for his wand. "I've got to get to Knockturn Alley, sir."

"To meet a group of unknown Death Eaters." Harry expected the Hogwarts Headmaster's tone to be detached and even disdainful, but instead it was full of sympathy, understanding and a caring nature. "It's a noble thing, Harry, but not wise. You may think that I've forgotten what young love is like and maybe sometimes I do. But I do know, Harry, that it's not your time to face Voldemort yet and when you do face him it's not the best way to do it because of a trap."

Harry bowed his head. It was a sign of how much he had been forced to grow up that he did not throw a string of insults back at his former Head Teacher.

Just four years ago he had let his temper get the better of him and felt an urge lurking inside him to hit the Hogwarts Headmaster and breaking anything he came across. But hitting the man that was the most incredible and powerful Wizard in modern times was not a very wise idea. Right now, Dumbledore could offer hope through new ideas and formulate plans. Hitting him was not going to get Ginny back or help her, but listening to his mentor could.

"But Gin-"

"We will get her back, Harry."

"I love her more than I have ever loved anyone else, Professor," he explained as his eyes meet Dumbledore's with a look of pleading desperation. "I asked her to marry me and I can't lose her. I swear, that no matter what happens in there, I will do whatever it takes to make sure she gets back home and safe."

"And that is precisely why you cannot go along, Harry. We have to look at the full picture," Dumbledore told him softly. "I can assure you that not only is Miss Weasley a vital member of the Order of the Phoenix, and a talented witch, she is greatly loved and our top priority. She will be back with us very soon. We have already made good progress, we should have her back by tomorrow night at the latest."

"It's just a long time to hold out."

Dumbledore seemed to study his face. "I thought that you would be the one person that did not underestimate Miss Weasley and would know how strong she was."

Harry nodded. "I do, I meant for me. It's just so frustrating doing nothing."

"We are far from doing nothing, we are just planning things carefully. We have already got Miss Stevens and Miss Proctor out of there and we will get Ginny out the same way," the Hogwarts Head Teacher assured him as he offered him an understanding smile. "We have spies within the Death Eater ranks and they are keeping us well informed and helping these young women out."

"Do you trust them?" Harry asked doubtfully. "I mean really trust them to help out Gin?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said firmly, as if to settle the matter.

Harry looked at the old man for a couple of minutes in silence. It was clear that Dumbledore had meant the last statement to be an end to the conversation.

That did not stop him having doubts. _If the spies were really on their side then why had they left Jessica and Amy Proctor in there so long before getting them out? _They had waited until the Death Eaters had destroyed them and taken the life out of them in very similar fashion to what a Dementor would do. _Surely, if they were truly on their side, they would destroy the camps and not let anyone be kept their ten minutes let alone a couple of days?_

Harry looked back at Dumbledore for a second; he just could not help it. He could not trust Death Eaters whether they were spies for the Order of the Phoenix or not. And it killed him to think that they were Ginny's only hope.

"Shall we, Harry?"

He offered a weak nod and forced himself to move. Guilt flooded through his body with every step he took back to The Burrow. _What would happen to Ginny if he did not show up? Maybe he should just sprint out of that gate? Could he really turn in this fashion against Dumbledore's advice?_ He stared at the Hogwarts Headmaster. _The only person that mattered in all this was Ginny._


	8. Chapter Seven

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Seven: Midnight Flight

Ginny opened her eyes in frustration. Her mind was refusing to let her escape into the world of sleep where her unconscious self would dream of seeing Harry face to face. She longed to see the messy black hair that her hands seemed to belong in, and those emerald green eyes that sparkled like the sea. To see the smile he so rarely used, the one that would light up his whole face when he did. She yearned for the chance to fall into his strong arms again, arms that were packed with muscles from fighting this war but also so tender and protective.

She tried to make herself remember some good memories instead of dwelling on her situation. It occurred to her that all those occasions when she had been completely and utterly happy were those times when she had been with Harry. Like the time when escaping from Hermione's continuous lectures about the importance of the upcoming NEWTs. They had escaped to the broom shed by the Quidditch pitch and spent the afternoon alone with only a box of Chocolate Frogs for company, spending hours just for once forgetting the world around them. The only thing that had been important that day was that they had each other, no matter what happened. Or the time when she had fallen from her broom after Draco Malfoy had bewitched a Bludger to attack her and Harry had flown to catch her and they had end in a tangled heap on the floor.

She had not been in this pit, and Tom had not been playing with her thoughts and attempting to control or even dictate her feelings.

Tears ran down her face, stinging her cuts and stopping her eyes from closing. It was almost as though there was something small in the back of her brain that did not want her to give in yet. Well, what did her mind know? She wanted to collapse and not have to think about anything ever again. It was just too much and who could blame her for wanting to finally give in now? She banged her head against the back wall again and the familiar dull thud flooded through her mind.

She did not want to think; instead, she just wanted it all to end, for her pain to stop. Anything to get out of this pit one way or another without risking them touching her further or killing Harry. If that meant her own death, then so be it. Surely it was better for her to die than Harry? After all, how could dying be worse than this? To her befuddled mind, it looked like her death might be the only thing that would stop the pain. Harry was needed to win the war and she wasn't. He was the one that the prophecy had earmarked since before he was even born, not her.

She was expendable, just like Tom had always said.

A pang of guilt shot through her body as her tears seemed to take on a life of their own. _Was it wrong to want to die just to end it all?_ It would destroy her family and Harry. _She was just being selfish. How could wanting to die, wanting to end her pain and leave everyone she loved grieving, be the right thing?_ She was not worth the soil that Harry, her parents or her brothers walked on.

Riddle was right about her, just like she had always dreaded. She was a coward who wanted an easy way out, with the Slytherin that had been planted in her and grown from the simple words _Dear Tom_, all those years ago.

Her eyes fell on the old tattered diary that was in the corner of the room. She was a stupid little girl who was weak and useless, like Riddle had always told her.

An imprudent, selfish child that had allowed herself to get caught due to idle curiosity and now wanted her family to suffer more because of her. She should have headed back home with Harry and spread the good news.

A gullible, nave fool who had run back to help an invisible girl out when what she should have done was headed up those stairs.

An obtuse, confused teenager that had allowed none other than Draco Malfoy to play with her mind, play with her feelings and try to destroy her heart by splitting it into two pieces, just like Tom had done all those years ago. And just like seven years ago, she was letting Malfoy do this to her again. What kind of a Weasley was she?

Things were so screwed up now. The great pretence was over and the time in which she had been by Harry's side, finished. Well, it was fun while it lasted and she had no one else to blame for this but herself.

She cast her eyes downwards as she curled up in the corner and hugged her knees towards her for protection. Her slow breaths fell over her beaten body as her eyes closed. _Was this really how her life was going to end? Had she finally lost her fight?_ She let out another long, painful breath as she glanced upwards as if asking for some form of help. _Was she never going to get out of this pit? After hours of torture, would her body simply be left for the Death Eaters? Not that she looked anything like she used to, the carefree teenager was gone, replaced a drained old woman._ There was a stench of blood, vomit and a mixture of other foul smells. She was dirty, bloodied, and battered.

She rocked slightly and fingered the ring on her left hand. She did not deserve Harry; he was so much better than her. Harry should be with someone who was pretty and clever, and not corrupted like she had been. Tom had spent a year telling her this, although she had spent years denying and choosing to believe what Dumbledore and others had kept saying to her. She had known all along that the person who was right was Tom. It just all made sense, how could it not be true?

Well, Harry would move on from this and find someone who was much better for him than she was.

She was expendable.

An angry voice on the other side of the door jolted her out of her spiral of despair.

"What do you mean that he never showed up? She is his damn fiance! I thought that the half blood fool Potter loved this runt of a blood traitor? The Dark Lord is going to be furious. What do you mean, he never showed?"

"I mean," the now nervous second voice continued, "that Potter did not show up."

Ginny's heart fell a little bit more so that it was now resting right in the pit of her stomach.

Harry had had the chance to help her and he never showed. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. Was she was being completely irrational or not? Maybe he didn't show because he had never really loved her. Maybe her family didn't care either. Perhaps she was just a mistake, unplanned, and an accident. All this time she felt they loved her and they were just putting up with her. Now that it really mattered they had voted with their feet and refused to risk their lives for this silly girl they never wanted in the first place.

"I waited for over an hour with Avery, Nott and Flint, but he never came. It was almost like he knew it was a trap."

_That's why he didn't come,_ a more rational voice intoned. _He knew it was a trap. Stop being so stupid, Gin. You know Harry better than that. Get a grip, Harry is going to come._

"Of course he knew it was a trap. Potter may be a fool, but he's not stupid." Lucius Malfoy's voice had a cold, calculated tone to it that sent a chill down her back. The tone was almost worse than the words he spoke. "In the past he has attempted several foolish rescue missions for all those he claims to love. What has changed now?"

'_He doesn't love you',_ Tom's voice said in her head. He went to save Sirius and Professor Lupin, but not her. _'You were just convenient for him, you were an easy capture.'_ There is nothing special about you at all, Gin, nothing at all. You're just a pawn in this war, a statistic that was lost in battle and that's all you are.

She shook her head; that was not true. It just could not be true. How could she have imagined all those feelings that he claimed to have for her? There were feelings there when they had escaped from the rain into the Quidditch changing rooms and shared their first kiss. If he did not love her, let alone care about her, he would not have placed a ring on her finger and asked her to marry him.

He just knew that this was not his battle and that he was right. This was her battle, due to her stupidity. Harry's battle was with Riddle in order to end the war and return the world back to normal, even if that was a world without her in it. She needed to sort this out somehow herself, and not let Harry risk his life.

'_None of that changes the fact that he took the risks to rescue them but not you.' _

"I have no idea," an unfamiliar gruff male voice said.

"Well, I suggest that we find out then. I don't like to be kept in the dark about these things. Let us find out what she has to say for herself," Malfoy commanded in harsh, icy tones. She heard the sound of shoes scraping across the floor outside the door, similar to the ones she had heard earlier when had been listening to the girl next door. A shiver ran down her spine as the heel hit the stone floor. "Go get the girl."

She let out a series of small quick breaths and her body slumped, almost as if it was collapsing from within. She could feel a sense of dread filling her body. Any second now the cold steel door behind which she was locked would fling open and she would be facing a Malfoy again. She knew she should be building up her defences, putting her brain into overdrive and getting ready to spit a hail of bulleted insults back at him.

But she just did not to have the energy left in her to fight, nor to even really care that much. After all, why should she care about her life when Harry didn't? Her mind was going around ever decreasing and futile circles.

The door flew open and she glanced upwards to see the Death Eater standing before her. She slumped further into the corner of her pit and focused her mind on thinking there was a weight in her mucky and battered trainers. She may not care about herself, but she was going to be damned if she would ever help Malfoy and his scum.

She had learnt from a young age that if you did not want someone to move you, all you needed to do was make yourself as awkward as possible. Knowing that she should make some kind of effort, she concentrated hard trying to force all her weight into her feet. It wasn't much but she owed her family something. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor; she did not want to look into another cold white mask.

Her body was being unceremoniously dragged by her arms, feeling as though they were being yanked out of their sockets as her body scraped along the floor and flopped like a rag doll. Her face slammed on the floor as she was dropped just mere feet outside of her cell and next to a pair of shiny black boots. She looked upwards, forcing her head to move despite the pain, before lowering her eyes once more. Lucius Malfoy looked disdainfully at her.

"Crucio."

A pain beyond anything she had ever experienced before filled her body. Every one of her bones felt as if it were on fire. It was almost as if someone had sent jets of fire directly at her and her bones where actually burning. Her head felt like it was going to split in two, her eyes began to roll in their sockets as her pupils dilated and tears traced their salty way down her battered face. Her mouth opened involuntarily as her tongue swelled up and her body writhed and twitched as her arms and legs bent in unusual fashions. As she heard the air around her being filled with her own screams, it was as if she was watching her body from above and the series of shrieks and yells she let out were coming from someone else.

She just wanted it all to end, so that she could black out and die.

Then the pain seemed to halt as quickly as it had started when his wand had been lowered. It was gone and her body hung limply. She struggled to find her knees as she sat up, doubting her ability to stand up, let alone move.

"Not nice is it?" asked the cool and calculating voice of Lucius Malfoy.

She kept her mouth firmly closed. She was not going to give them any form of answer. That's what they wanted and she was not going to give them anything they wanted. She was not going to let them hear her beg. She was not going to waste her time and the small amount of strength that her body had left spitting out retorts to them.

"Where is Potter?"

"I don't know." Her voice was weary, but she kept her eyes directly fixed on him.

"Why didn't he come to get you?"

She let out a small sigh as she adopted an innocent tone. "Isn't it getting boring asking the same question over and over again?"

"Does he not love you?" Malfoy asked, his voice becoming more impatient and intense.

"I don't know," she spat back with all the ferocity she could muster.

"Where is Potter?" he demanded in a louder tone than before.

She offered him a small smile and fixed her eyes on him as grim determination filled her entire body. "I'm not telling you anything."

"Well, this should refresh your memory, Miss Weasley," Lucius Malfoy said in an idle tone as he raised his want and pointed it directly at her heart. "Crucio."

Once again, her mind became aware of every nerve in her body screaming for some kind of relief. Fire lit throughout her and pain echoed through every inch of her as her chilling screams were punctuated with the cackling of the Death Eater's laughter. In her torment she lost all sense of time. It could have been anything from mere minutes to hours that the sense of being burnt from the inside rattled around her body.

She panted as her lungs gasped for air and the curse was once again removed. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't tell them anything. Despite what may be happening to her body or, even for that matter, in her love life. Harry was too important to this war; he was going to end Riddle's control over the world. Steeling herself with what determination she could muster, she began to pull herself together. Other people had withstood this curse and so would she.

Yeah, and gone mad because of it, spending their lives in the locked in a ward at St Mungo's.

She gulped as her body gave an involuntary shudder. Well, that was worth it. They had done the right thing by keeping quiet and she would do the same. She was not going to help Tom again; she was an adult, not a child anymore. There were far more important things in the world than her sanity.

Pushing herself to her knees, she felt her body throb in pain. Slowly and carefully, ignoring the aches, she used her right hand to throw her red hair out of her face. Her heart stopped as she saw a white streak intermingled with the vibrant dark red. The only person she had ever seen that had prematurely gained white hair was Neville's mother, Alice Longbottom, sent mad by the Cruciatus Curse.

Was she going to end up as a permanent fixture at St. Mungos too, or would she get lucky and die now?

"Where's Potter?" The voice was back, as cold and hard as ever.

"I don't know and even if I did, I would not tell you." She tried to keep the weary and desperate tones from her voice. Instead, she tried to invest it with the firm qualities that rose from her heart. "I'm not helping you. I'm not telling you were Harry is."

Lucius Malfoy raised his wand and gently caressed it in the long fingers of his gloved right hand. "I can keep this going for as long as I need to. So why don't you just end it all and tell us where Potter is. It would be easy and relatively painless. So Miss Weasley, I ask again, where is Harry Potter?"

"Screw you."

"Crucio."

Harry sat in the living room at The Burrow and let his eyes dart around. After forty-eight hours of staying awake, members of his adoptive family had drifted into an uneasy and interrupted sleep. Molly Weasley had watched them all like a hawk until she too succumbed to the inevitable. Harry watched her eyes slowly and gently close as the protective mother finally gave in to exhaustion.

He cast his gaze downwards and focused on his watch; the larger black hand had just clicked past the six making it half past two in the morning. His heart sank; Ginny had been in the hands of those Death Eaters for nearly forty-eight hours. For two days she had been in the hands of Voldemort's elite followers and as if to make it worse, she had now been officially registered as missing.

But she was still alive; his heart had told him that, and she was still fighting. Yet she had been with Malfoy for so long he could not help but wonder what kind of state she would be in when she got back. He just had to think about the look on her old Hogwarts classmate's face from this afternoon for his worries to grow.

_Dumbledore had said that she was alive, safe and holding out well under the circumstances. Well what the hell did that mean? Holding out was never an encouraging set of words. _

The Hogwarts Head Teacher had praised his fiance's courage and chosen to stress the fact that no matter how hard it was, the official steps had to be taken, just like they had been before. They could not risk everything that they had set in place in one quick sweep. Ginny, the old man reminded him, was a fighter and would not appreciate losing someone she loved as a sacrifice for her own life. After they had seen the relevant plans and reports, her family had reluctantly agreed with Dumbledore. Even then, it had taken hours of thinking and careful discussion as well as the odd tear or mumbled sob, particularly when Mrs Weasley had removed herself to the kitchen to be alone.

Harry picked up a blueprint of Malfoy Manor in his right hand, of which the fingernails had been gnawed away. He carefully ran his fingers across the map, studying the passages and trying to work out the best way to the dungeons. He mentally started to plan his way through the manor so that he could get in and out as quickly as possible. He needed a short quick route to and from the Portkey outside the house in case Ginny was too weak to walk. Harry remembered his own experiences with the Cruciatus Curse; he had needed help just to move after all his strength had been zapped from his body as the after effects of the curse took hold of him. All the while, the echoes of Death Eaters cackling repeating in his head.

He pocketed his wand inside his cloak and scanned the room for Ron's wand. The wand core was unicorn hair, just like his younger sister's. He knew that it was not Ginny's wand; it was a different type of wood and nearly twice the size of his girlfriend's. Yet it was the nearest thing to he was going to find to his fiance's wand and that had to be better than nothing.

Harry noticed that Ron was asleep on the sofa next to Hermione with his body intertwined with hers. He ignored the pangs of jealously that he felt and carefully went over to pick up the wand. Doing his best not to wake up either of his best friends, he softly pulled the wand off the arm of the sofa. Ron's eyes started to flutter open and Harry froze.

"I need to borrow this mate," he whispered.

"What for?" whispered Ron, trying not to wake his own girlfriend. His eyes drifted up to look at Harry's cloak. "What are you going to do, mate?"

"I'm going to get her."

Ron glanced at Hermione's sleeping body that was trapping him on the sofa. He quickly checked that she was still asleep, looking like he did not want to involve her in the conversation. With a small weak smile he softly stroked her wavy brown hair and then refocused back on Harry with an incredulous expression on his face.

"What?"

"I don't trust the Death Eaters to get her back to us," he explained, "and I can't live without her." Though soft in tone as he tried not to wake the other up, it was nevertheless loaded with emotion. "Ginny's the person that sees me for the idiot that I am and doesn't care, she still loves me. She's part of me, Ron, it's like my heart is attached to hers. She the one and she's always been the one."

He placed the wand on the map next to his own and looked at his friend. "I'm going to get her and no one's going to stop me. I'm just not waiting any longer. Merlin knows what she has already been through." His voice shook as he thought of Jessica's pale, drawn face and the look of pure terror that rested behind her eyes. "What they have already done to her."

Ron nodded. "I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am. She's my little sister and you're not going to stop me."

"I know that, and if it was the other way round I'd be saying the same thing."

He studied Ron's reddened face that had steadily been gaining colour through anger and frustration for the last couple of minutes. Beneath the calm exterior he could see that it was full of grim determination. How could he stop Ron coming with him when it would be exactly the same thing that he would have done? Yet Ron was somewhat of a liability when he was emotionally involved in something and Harry was not going to let anyone else suffer because of him. It was bad enough that Ginny was in danger due to her being his better half. He would not let this happen to anyone else.

This was a battle between himself and Voldemort. They were the only two names mentioned in that damn prophecy. Everyone else were just innocent victims in this war. Just like the innocent victims in any war, except this time they were made up of his friends, family and now Ginny. And he'd be damned if he was going to continue that trend; this was something he needed to do alone.

Ron slowly and carefully shifted Hermione's sleeping body off him. He rested her softly against the back of the sofa taking special attention to place her head on a battered cushion. "Well, that's agreed then."

"No," said Harry softly but firmly, "it's not." He looked his fiance's brother straight in the eyes.

"Look Ron," he continued, trying to be conciliatory, "it's me they want, not you or Ginny. She is just being used as bait because of her link to me. And trust me, you know your sister well enough to know that that the last thing she would want is to lose someone she loves so that she could be rescued."

"Well, she's not exactly here to tell us that is she?" Ron's tone was even and his voice was deadly quiet, but it conveyed all he wanted it to. He was not happy with what Harry was saying and he wasn't going to give in easily.

"No, she's not," agreed Harry. His voice was firm, he wasn't going to budge easily either. He glanced over his shoulder to check everyone else was still asleep before continuing. "But I'm here and trust me when I say that I will hex you if you even move." He dropped his eyes and adopted a softer tone. He could not help but feel guilty talking to Ron like this but could not take the risk of him being there. "You need to stay here and make sure that everything is okay for her to come back to. We can't all be on the frontline."

Ron was prepared for the argument as he stubbornly stared at Harry and spoke with a voice full of grit and determination. "But what about you? I mean, you said it yourself. Ginny would not want you risking your life, which is what you are doing, Harry. That place will be both guarded and flooded with traps."

"I'll take my chances with them."

"And what makes you think that Ginny will appreciate you being there anymore than me? She'll hex you into next week, mark my words." Ron had paused before he spoke and Harry noted that his words had been carefully chosen as he argued his point.

"I'll more than gladly let her hex me, just as long as she is back home, alive, safe and out of Malfoy's hands."

Ron shot him a hopeful smile as he became resigned to the fact he was not going to change Harry's mind. "I'll remind you of that when you are lying in St Mungo's."

"I don't mind being in St Mungo's as long as your sister is with me." Harry found himself smiling back. "I swear that she will be back home within a couple of hours and we will be having our postponed party. Trust me, the only problem we have left is the issue of bed rest especially if we're in the same room."

"Bad mental image, Harry. She's my little sister and does not do those kinds of things. There are just certain things a brother should not know." Ron said with a grimace before adopting a solemn look on his face. "But seriously mate, make sure you take care of yourself and both you and Ginny make it back out of there. Don't either of you do anything that you don't have to. Just come home, please. The battle is not going to be won or lost today and we all need you both back here."

"We'll be back, if only because I have every intention of marrying your sister and watching you make a prat of yourself with the best man's speech."

Harry offered him a slight nod as he picked up his cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders. He carefully placed his right hand in his pocket and felt the two wands and the rolled up bit of parchment touching his fingers. He smiled; it was almost as if the magic buzzing from the wand was offering warmth through his fingers and on to the rest of his body. Now that he had everything that he needed, there was no putting it off. Now was as good a time as any to leave.

As he rose to his feet, he ignored the flutter of nerves that rose like butterflies in his stomach. It was normal for him to have the odd feeling of nerves before going off on a mission. The fact that his stomach felt like it had now entered a Muggle roller coaster ride unnerved him, but did not weaken his resolve. With a final nod to Ron, he walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. He paused to glance at the old grandfather clock for reassurance. A shudder ran through him and his body froze as he saw that hand inscribed _'Ginevra Molly'_ now pointed to the twelfth position: _'MORTAL PERIL.'_

Mortal Peril. The words slowly started to sink into his body. It could only mean one thing; Ginny was finally losing her fight. Moral Peril, as the words stated, was a sign that the end was here. A sense of fury flooded through his body as he stared at the clock. He felt a sudden urge to smash it into tiny pieces if only to release his anger and bent up frustration.

_How the bloody hell had that happened? Dumbledore had assured them all only that afternoon that Ginny would be okay and that she was coping very well under the circumstances, a true testament to her family. That she would be home with them soon and would need their love, but her physical welfare would recover within mere hours. But then how could Ginny's clock hand have changed from 'lost' to 'mortal peril'? What kind of a job were Dumbledore spies doing? They were meant to be saving her life not endangering it._

Harry glanced quickly at the open living room door. _Should he go in there and tell them about the change to the old grandfather clock? Surely they had a right to know about it._ He shook his head and tried to reason with himself. It would just take longer to get there as Dumbledore was called and time looked to be the one thing that Ginny did not have much left of.

With a small popping sound, he Disapparated from The Burrow's kitchen and reappeared just seconds later in the mud caked fields of West Wiltshire. The fields were cold and deserted. A shiver ran down his back as the wind built up to an increasing speed over the land and pounded against his face. He found himself being forced to squint as the low-lying crescent moon gave out very little light. He pulled his cloak closer to him and glanced down at his watch. It felt like hours had passed, but only a couple of minutes had gone by as the minute hand only just clicked past the twelve.

He walked across the uneven ground, through the muddy grass and towards the distant lights of a large, old English manor house that was about a mile away. No wonder the Death Eaters used this house, there was no other form of life around for miles. Malfoy manor was said to have both strong Apparition wards and Muggle Repelling Charms attached to it. One of the worst kept secrets in recent years was that the Malfoy's home doubled as one of the Death Eater's headquarters along with the Riddle house in Little Hangleton, although no definite proof had been acquired as of yet.

His heart pounded against his chest as he quickened his pace. Ginny was in mortal peril and he was still too far away to do anything. He broke into a swift jog as his mind ran through the different possibilities of what would meet him when he arrived. After he reached the sixteenth century mansion, he still had to get to the dungeons and find her. He knew that he should have left earlier, much earlier. He should have gone to meet those Death Eaters, bugger the consequences, or at the very least have walked out of The Burrow and not listened to Dumbledore.

He was going to make a useless husband. What kind of man was he that sat in the warm living room while his future wife was fighting for her life in a cell? Maybe after he got her back, he should take back his offer, so much had changed. And Ginny deserved so much better than him.

Harry squinted as he saw two figures emerge from the house in the distance. He had hoped that all the Death Eaters would be asleep by now. That is why he had waited so long and increased the risk of placing Ginny's life in more danger. He aimed to arrive when they were all asleep so that he could get her out swiftly without anything happening, like in his fifth year at Hogwarts. Yet there were still two Death Eaters, right there, obviously very much awake. So much for the grand plan to avoid open conflict.

He raised his wand, keeping it pointed at the figures as he watched them in the reflected light of the open door.

That was Draco Malfoy, he was sure of it. The grand robes, slick blond almost white hair, the swagger. He pointed his wand directly at the young Death Eater; even from this distance he was positive he could hit him with a well-aimed curse. _He had hated that slimly git since he first laid eyes on him all those years ago in Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions in Diagon Alley as he was fitted for his first set of Wizarding robes._

Harry narrowed his eyes. He knew Malfoy was with someone, he had seen two people come out of the house. He struggled to get a good view of the other person. They were smaller than Malfoy, of a slighter build. A girl? Was Malfoy with a woman? It was hard to tell when the whole body was engulfed in a large black cloak with the hood over the head. Well, if it was a woman, that was strange in itself. As far as he knew the majority of Death Eaters were male. In fact, the only female Death Eater he knew of was Bellatrix Lestrange. Then another, more troubling thought occurred to him. Was this girl merely Draco Malfoy's nightly entertainment?

Where were Fred and George's Extendable Ears when he needed them? It was clear from their body language that they were arguing. It would be useful to know what the Death Eaters where arguing about. It might give him some idea what to expect when he got there. He quickened his pace yet again so that he was running, keeping his wand raised and aimed at Malfoy as he did so. The closer he got the less sure he became that Malfoy's companion was indeed a Death Eater.

He paused as he stopped dead and stared at the sight that greeted him, scarcely able to believe his eyes. Could that possibly be?

Ginny found herself racked with pain and curled up in the corner of her cell, struggling to breathe. Her breathing took the form of quick pants that hardly filled her lungs with any air. Tears were streaming down her face and every part of her body felt like a dragon had just breathed huge gushes of fire across it, burning her from the tip of her filthy trainer to her roots of her now bedraggled mane of red hair.

How did people withstand these curses? Where did they get the strength from? She was sure if they came back she would crumble under the pain of the next curse and let them know everything they wanted. Not that she could actually tell them much about the Order of the Phoenix. As an eighteen-year-old that had only just finished at school she was not that important within the Order. But she could tell them almost anything they could possibly want about Harry.

Or had she actually said too much already? Was that why they had left her alone now? She had spent hours under torture and all she could remember about those hours was pain beyond belief. Her body shuddered as her mind went into a frenzy. Had she already betrayed everyone that she loved? Where they all in danger because of her at the moment?

She looked up to the ceiling as her neck bent in pain and yet more tears washed down her bloodstained face. _So much for not crying. You know you're completely useless, Gin, you can't even manage to keep your tears in check. You have let Tom win, just like he would have done in the Chamber if it had not been for Harry._ She let out another series of small quick breaths along with a muffled sob. _It all hurts so much. Merlin, please just let me die; please just let it all stop. _

The door creaked open and her body curled into a foetal position. They were coming to torture her again and she needed to just see it out. _Merlin, I want to die._

"Impressive." She recognised Draco Malfoy's cold drawl. "You have just held out for twelve straight hours without revealing anything. Like I said, I'm impressed."

She felt a small wash of relief; she had not told them anything about Harry, if Malfoy was to be believed. And she did not have the strength or motivation left in her to fight him, question him or even offer some kind of answer. Her whole body felt like it was shutting down, that she was dying. But she knew that couldn't be the case as the Death Eaters did not want that, so what was going on? How long would she stay like this before it gave in, before they let her rest in peace? She closed her eyes. Please let me die now, while I haven't said anything. Please let me die and not make me listen to Malfoy's demands, taunts and riddles.

"Not that it looks like it. Looking at you now, I'm guessing you couldn't last five minutes let alone the sixteen hours that you have endured," Malfoy continued. She had heard his cocky and idle drawl so many times before and knew that it came from his belief that he was superior to her. "Do you think you could last any longer? Or has the mighty Gryffindor finally fallen? What do you think, Weasley? Don't tell me that you are finally going to stay quiet for a while instead of your infuriating chatter."

Ginny felt her body twitch as his boot made contact with her already bruised side. She was forced to open her eyes as a fresh stream of tears confirmed that she had broken at least one rib. Slowly, she opened her mouth to fire off an insult, it was her natural response. Once a Malfoy spoke to you, especially in that tone, you insulted him back. And then you watched the sparks fly as the cool Malfoy temperament of ice meet the natural Weasley fire. And as always happened when fire meet ice, the result was spectacular.

"Fuck you, Malfoy."

"A simple 'fuck you'? Where have all the witty responses gone? Not that it matters. You need to lose that attitude, Weasley," he said coolly. He bent down to her level and a smug smile grew on his lips. "Believe me, right now you need my help."

She struggled to focus her eyes on the former Hogwarts Head Boy as her brain felt like it was whirling. "I don't need anyone to help me, especially if that help comes from a Death Eater."

Malfoy laughed as he moved the matted hair out of her eyes. "You could have fooled me, Weasley. Tut tut, you are quite simply a mess, Ginevra."

Carefully, she forced all the strength that she had left in her and raised her right hand level with his face. She moved her wrist feebly backward as pain echoed down her arm and flung it towards his face.

Her right hand was crushed in his hand, mere centimetres from his left check. "Seeker reflexes. I thought you of all people would appreciate that."

He grabbed the top of her head, keeping a firm hold onto her hair as he yanked her neck backwards. She felt her mouth fall open as he pinched her nose. The temptation to close her mouth and stop breathing once and for all filled her body. Just as she started to close her mouth a glass vial met her lips and a thick liquid fell into her mouth. She fought to keep it in her mouth so she could spit it straight back at him, but he quickly slammed her mouth shut. With both her mouth and nose blocked to air, she had two choices; death in the pit or swallowing the liquid. She just did not have the courage to take her own life.

"Much better."

"What was it?" she panted, the pain easing as her head fell back into a position where her muscles were not twisted. "What have you just given me?"

"Strengthening solution."

"What?"

"Just close your mouth for a minute, Weasley," he said in a patronising tone. "If you are quiet then you will come through this unscathed."

"And you said I was losing it. Look at me, Malfoy, I can't really be called unscathed as it is."

"You look a damn sight better than you usually do, Weasley, and much better than any of your predecessors did when they left here. You just need to listen for a mere minute. Do you think you could do that?"

"What makes you think for a second that I'd do what you want me to?" She felt the throb of pain start to ease throughout her body and used her new found strength to remind him who he was dealing with. She spat at him. "You're going to regret giving me that potion."

"Silencio," he said, and with a flick of his wand her voice disappeared. "Trust a Weasley not to know what's good for her."

She glared fearlessly at him. She wanted to issue a variety of her favourite swear words at him, but was forced to settle for spitting straight in his eyes.

"Do I need to gag you?" he asked as he wiped his eyes. "It's hard to see why everyone thinks that you are so important when you act like this. I'm half tempted just to leave you like this." She watched as Draco Malfoy whipped out a roll of parchment and she shot him a confused look. What the hell was going on? "This is a note to Dumbledore that will double as a Portkey once you have left the house. It will activate from the fields once you have cleared around 100 yards and take you straight to St Mungo's. Once you get to St Mungo's, you are not to mention any of this. Otherwise I will be on your ward in an instant and at the very least modifying your memory. Do you understand?"

She nodded as a sense of numbness filled her body. How could a Malfoy be a spy for Dumbledore? And more than that how could a Malfoy offer help to a Weasley? The history between the two families was steeped in hatred. She gulped as she looked into those cold deep grey eyes. Could she trust Draco Malfoy? She had been bought up to hate him and his actions at school had not changed that impression.

Her head was spinning. Her whole world had just been turned upside down. Was the next thing that she was going to hear that Harry Potter was a spy for Riddle? Well, that was just as ridiculous in her book as Malfoy working for the Order of the Phoenix.

"Right, so you take this scroll and get upstairs while everyone's still asleep. Don't speak, don't make any noise." With a flick of his wand, his cancelled the silencing spell and continued, "Follow the corridor past the kitchen into the conservatory and through the garden, keep going and you will find yourself on the fields. All the doors are open. Now go."

"But why?"

"Look Weasley, you need to leave right now because you don't want to know what they are planning to do to you. You will remain down here and your body will be alive. My father will continue to visit you, but after a while your soul will be as good as dead. You're important and you're his prize." A shudder ran down her spine. He had to be lying, but then again she was not going to take that chance. "Now stop being a Gryffindor fool and wipe that vacant expression off your face, it belongs on your brother. Get out of here, Weasley, before I am forced to take things into my own hands and stop you being a security risk. And take this."

Carefully, she got to her feet and glanced at Malfoy, picking up his huge black cloak. She felt herself wobbling and stretched out her hand to reach the wall. Well, that was natural after not using her legs for so long. But this was anything but natural and her instincts were against it. Was this yet another trap that she was going to run into? Where they just playing with her mind again? Even if they were could she afford to take the risk in staying here?

After all, what was worst that could happen? She'd end up back here in this pit? Whereas, if this worked she would be back home within hours. She shrugged, well what was life without the odd risk now and again, and the bigger the risk, the more you gained from it.

Her legs felt shifty as she started to move them. Slowly, she began to walk as her feet started to feel steady, she broke into a run. Her smile grew, this was it she was getting out of here and would not have to think about any of this again.

Without looking back she headed across the main room of the dungeons. Ignoring the pain in her aching limbs she darted up the stone stairs, she ran straight through the upper rooms of Malfoy Manor and into the garden without even glancing over her shoulder once. She did not want to know if anyone was going to send any spells at her. If they came, then let them. She did want to think of any problems. Right now all she wanted to think about was getting out of here and seeing Harry, her mum and the rest of her family again.

A sense of cold swept through her body as the early morning air hit her. She suddenly felt very unprotected out in the moors where she could be easily located. Her body was frozen and she pulled the cloak closer to her, raising the hood to engulf her head. Her fingers trembled as she wrapped the cloak closer to her. What had just happened?

"Weasley."

Slowly she span around to see Draco Malfoy, wand raised waving something at her. Her body froze. "What is it Malfoy?"

Was this some strange sick game of cat and mouse? Some new form of torture? To give her some form of hope only to whip it away from her within seconds? To build up her adrenaline, so that she was in the right shape for whatever he wanted? Were they trying to mess with her mind yet again? Her first instinct about Draco Malfoy had been right and she always trusted her instincts. Why was she letting them play with her?

She felt her hand automatically dive for her wand before realising that it had been snapped days ago. A shudder ran down her spine. She had never felt so defenceless and vulnerable, not even on one of those stone floors she had nearly died on. She was at the mercy of Draco Malfoy.

"You forgot this," he said offering her the piece of parchment. "You won't get far without it."

"I didn't forget it," she replied as she edged closer to him before grabbing the parchment. "You forgot, you forgot to give to me."

"MALFOY!"

She felt Malfoy raise his wand next to her and heard it whip through the air. She followed with her eyes to where the wand was raised, in the direction of a man running towards them. Harry. Malfoy was pointing his wand straight at Harry. Her mind slowed down. Harry was here and he was going to help her, but wasn't Draco Malfoy already doing that? And from the look on Harry's face he was ready for a fight with him.

Her legs wobbled as her knees buckled and she felt herself collapse into the mud, as her strength gave out. She placed her hands on the ground as she tried to push herself upward and managed to scramble to her knees.

"Harry."

"It's going to be okay, Gin."

"Harry, it's-,"

"Tell me later."

"Don't you listen to people, Potter?" Malfoy drawled as he grabbed her hand. "You we're told to stay away and I'm here to sort out Weasley."

"You did this?"

"Well, who do you think did it, Potty?"

"I should have known, in fact I did know and you're not going to get away with it anymore, Malfoy."

Carefully, she tried to pull Malfoy's wand out of his hand. He was not going to hurt Harry and it was flashing green sparks out the end. Her body was tangled with his as Malfoy was looking down at her disdainfully while her eyes stayed fixed on Harry.

"What the fucking hell are you playing at, Weasley?" he asked as he raised his wand back at Harry with red sparks flying out the end.

Her eyes widened as she watched helplessly from the ground as a flash of green light shot from Harry's wand.

"_AVADA KEDAVRA!_"


	9. Chapter Eight

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Chapter Eight: Safe and Sound?

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Harry watched as the green jet of light hit the Death Eater in the chest. Draco Malfoy's body tumbled through the air and landed with a squelch in the mud. _I've just killed Malfoy. _He became aware of his rapid heartbeat as the adrenaline coursed through his body. With a deep breath, his agitation began to disappear, only to be replaced with a strangely calm and almost detached state. _That doesn't matter. _Ginny was the only person that mattered in all of this.

He turned his attention to his girlfriend, who had now slumped to the floor. As he began to move towards her, the effort it took to pull his feet from the mud reminded him of how long he'd been standing in the quagmire that surrounded the manor. The joy he was feeling at seeing her was rapidly disappearing with every step he took. _What was going on? What had already happened?_

"Ginny?" he asked as his voice trembled and, for the first time, he started to doubt his relationship.

She did not respond to him verbally, nor did she even look at him. Instead, she chose to look at Malfoy's body. Her shaking hand emerged from her cloak and brushed along the Death Eater's hand and to his wrist, searching for a pulse.

"Gin?" he said in a worried voice.

Her face was white as she turned back to him.

"He's dead," she replied, her voice sounding hollow and dry.

He never thought that he would ever get used to hearing those words, but he had. It was down to the woman who was in front of him now that he had learnt to stop feeling guilty about deaths.

_"You can't waste your life away with what-ifs, Harry. I mean, if I thought of all the what-ifs from my first year, I'd torture myself non-stop. You just can't keep blaming yourself. Sirius loved you and the last thing he would want is for you to stay in a self-pitying state of misery. He would want you to live instead of just surviving. His death was not your fault; people die in wars, Harry." _

And she was right. The last thing that Hagrid, Sirius, Remus or his parents would want was for him to be so consumed by guilt over the deaths of others that he forgot to live. Dumbledore had told him when he was eleven that it 'did not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live'. And he had found that was just the same with guilt and the attendant nightmares. You needed to keep living your life. There had been no war in history that had ended without a single death and it was the same with this one. But he had not yet reached the stage where people that died were just a meaningless statistic. With each death there always came a certain sense of numbness and grief. These were the very things that Dumbledore said kept them fighting on the right side of the war. The difference between the Order and the Death Eaters was that they knew what it was like to feel human emotions.

He glanced at his former classmate's still body. To the casual observer it was untouched with no sign of injury. But he could see the look of shock in those cold grey eyes. He felt a large lump rise in his throat but dismissed the stirrings of compassion straight away; _he didn't have time for it. _The former Slytherin was one of Voldemort's lap dogs and he was not going to shed any tears or lose any sleep over a dead Death Eater, especially a Malfoy who had been torturing Ginny. _Malfoy was a git, a cold hearted bastard that had joined Voldemort's ranks as soon as he had turned seventeen. _His death would change nothing, in fact it could only make things better.

"Yes, he is," he said in a detached voice.

His eyes scanned around for signs of other Voldemort's cronies. If the only Death Eater around was dead then it would make things much easier. He and Ginny had to get out of here as quickly as possible and a lack of potential enemies around had to be a good thing.

"You just killed him," she said in a subdued voice.

Harry did a quick double take as he looked at her pale face. Her voice had sounded weak and fatalistic, two qualities that he had never heard in it before.

He had expected things to be different, knowing what had happened to Jessica. He knew that she would not be the same person that disappeared down Knockturn Alley. But he had not been prepared for her to be so subdued. Ginny was never quiet and she wasn't the sort to accept things meekly.

"Ginny…Gin," he said softly as he walked over towards her. "Gin, what did they do to you? Are you okay?"

She nodded at the dead body in front of her. "He helped me," she muttered. She was mumbling so incoherently that he could hardly make out the words that she was saying. She kept her eyes fixed downwards, her head bowed as if in respect. "And now he's dead."

He looked back at her with a confused look across his face. _What on earth was she going on about? Malfoy was a Death Eater and one of the people that had kidnapped and tortured her._ He studied her face trying to discern from it what was going on. "I'm sorry, Gin," he said softly, "but I don't understand what you're saying."

"He helped me." Her voice was slow, tired and devoid of emotion. "He let me out. He was the spy, Harry."

"Malfoy was Dumbledore's spy?"

She bowed her head into a small nod. "He gave me this," she explained in a drained voice. In her hand was a small piece of rolled parchment. She lifted it up to show him as if it explained everything. Harry looked at her, confusion written all over his face.

"It's a letter to Dumbledore and a Portkey to St Mungo's, just like he gave to Jess and the others."

His head was thumping. He could not take all this in. _How could Draco Malfoy be a spy for the Order of the Phoenix? It was absolutely and utterly ridiculous._ If he had been told this on Saturday morning he would have just laughed it off as a joke. Everything he knew about the Malfoys made them firm Voldemort supporters, not spies for the Order. It just worked against all natural logic. But as the skies started to lighten and his eyes returned to the still, lifeless body, the impossible started to seem possible.

Yet if it was possible that Malfoy had been recruited to fight on both sides of the war, then why the hell hadn't Dumbledore told him? When was the elderly Hogwarts Headmaster going to tell him everything instead of deciding what he thought was fit for his ears to hear? After all, he was the person that was destined to face Voldemort, not Dumbledore; surely at nineteen-years-old he should know all the inner plans of the Order of the Phoenix.

He heart sank. _Had he just killed an ally? Killed someone who was helping them out? But he hadn't known … how could he have been expected to know?_ He looked from Malfoy's body back to Ginny's dejected face.

None of that mattered right now. He could talk to Dumbledore later and tell him exactly what he thought of his plans to leave him out the loop once again. There was nothing he could do for Malfoy right now. But he could help out Ginny and she was the only person that he cared about.

"But what about you, Gin? Are you okay?" he asked as he offered her his hand, but she shrugged it off and he felt like he had just been kicked straight in the stomach. He let out a long low breath; he was not going to give up on her, on them, that easily. "Come on, Gin, say something to me."

"Nitwit."

"Nit what?" he said with a small smile, looking straight into her eyes. "How are you?"

"I've felt better." Her lips tried unsuccessfully to form a half smile. Her mouth had no hint of its usual grin and her eyes were dull and lifeless instead of glittering with mischief. "You've looked better, too. It looks like you haven't slept in days."

"I couldn't; not until I knew you were safe," he said as he offered her a weak smile. Glancing around them once more, he continued, "We have to get you out of here."

"What about Malfoy?" she asked in a fragile voice.

He shrugged, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "We can't do anything for him now."

"Is that what you would have said if that curse had hit me?" she asked in a flat tone. "What would have happened if I had died before anyone could do anything about it? Would you have just left me here?"

"Of course not," he replied instantly, his voice full of indignation.

"Well," she demanded, "what's the difference?" The tears that had been welling in her eyes finally started to trickle down her bruised face. "What makes me so damn special? I'm not important, so why is everyone so focused on me? I'm not special, Harry."

"You're right; you're not special," he said firmly as he took her hand and held onto it tightly. "Special is too ordinary for you and you're extraordinary. You're incredible because you are you. You're the first person I think of when I wake up and the last person I think of before I go to sleep. You're the person that makes my days worthwhile, worth living. Gin, you're the person I want to marry."

If he had expected to break through and reach her, he was disappointed. She looked at him straight in the eyes as she pulled her hand away. "And Draco Malfoy doesn't do that for someone."

"I don't know, Gin, seriously, I could not tell you. But you are my only concern, right now," he said as he saw the sky start to turn into a deep red, a sense of urgency starting to flood through him. "And you need to get out of here, it's just not safe. We both need to. We're taking a huge risk still being here."

Her head bowed into a small nod.

"Can you Apparate without splinching yourself?"

"I've got a Portkey."

"Right," he replied with a small nod, "and will it get you home safely?"

"He said it would take me to St Mungo's," Ginny replied as she gestured towards the body lying at her feet. "Looks like there's no reason not to believe it."

"Are you sure?" Harry asked. He was desperate to actually do something to help and was still unwilling to trust the word of a Death Eater, even if they were a spy. "I can make you a new one in a second."

"It's okay," she said, shaking her head. "I've just got to walk out of range of the wards." She paused and looked directly at him in the eyes. "I'll see you later, then, Harry?"

He thought his heart would break at her casual dismissal. Giving her a small nod, he fought the urge to follow her. _It was obviously not what she wanted at the moment._

He watched as she slowly and carefully got to her feet and started to walk away. She didn't give him a backward glance and he could feel his heart start to sink as watched her start to disappear. She had not smiled at him once; her entire face had been completely impassive throughout their conversation and her normally lively brown eyes looked dead.

The only time that he had seen her looking like this before was at Charlie's funeral when she had desperately tried to keep her tears in check. That had been less than a year ago, but so much had happened since then it felt like a lifetime.

_Well, this time he was going to be with her every step of the way, and that would start right now. _He got to his feet, leaving Malfoy lying on the floor, and ran after her.

"Ginny?"

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Yes?" she asked. Her voice sounded weak and tired.

"You know I love you, right?"

She nodded and met his eyes for the briefest of seconds, before she glanced downwards, pushing a matted lock of hair behind her shoulder.

"And I couldn't live my life without you, so I'm here for whatever you need," he said, hoping she could hear the sincerity in his voice.

"I know," she replied in a soft voice before turning away.

His heart plummeted. That was the first time he had ever said 'I love you' to Ginny and she had not responded with the same three little words. Ginny was his heartbeat and it felt like it was slowly stopping with every step that she took away from him. It hardly mattered that Draco Malfoy had died. After all, Malfoy was a Death Eater and had been one since his sixth year at Hogwarts. His death meant nothing compared to losing her.

Since Ginny had joined him in the Hogwarts library during his fifth year, offering him a moment of hope in a very hard eighteen months, she had become his rock. She didn't adopt the critical tones that Hermione used, or the nodding responses of Ron, but she listened to him, thought through ideas and helped him search for a solution. Ginny Weasley was his equal in every way possible.

He could not lose her. She kept him sane in all the madness of war and was always there when he had needed her. And he was going to do the same for her. He needed to bring her back to his side somehow, no matter how long that took.

Ginny closed her eyes as the doors to her private room in St Mungo's slammed shut. The noise echoing around her mind and the last of the Healers finally disappeared. Over the last couple of hours she had been fussed over by at least half a dozen Healers, Healers-in-training and several Medi-witches. She was sick of listening to them and trying to answer their questions. She had chosen to feign exhaustion so that she could avoid the same process with her family and members of the Order. A sense of relief had filled her body when the Healer-in-charge, Healer Talbot, finally respected her wishes and said that everyone, including the Order members and her family, were all to leave her alone until she had had some rest.

She just could not bear to see anyone at the moment. No matter what they said, it was her fault that she was in this position. She was the person that had decided to go wandering in Knockturn Alley and managed to walk into a trap and get kidnapped. It was her fault that Malfoy was dead and Harry was fighting the guilt of killing him. She had lost the Order of Phoenix a spy, hurt Harry and was tainted after letting Lucius Malfoy touch her body.

Her whole body ached with tiredness; all she wanted to do was sleep and let everything disappear in her dreams. Yet as she felt her eye lashes resting on the top of her cheek, she could see the lustful look on Lucius Malfoy's face, followed by the look of shock in Draco Malfoy's cold grey eyes flashing in and out of her mind.

_Come on, Gin, get a grip._

She let out a long, deep breath, thankful that her ribs had been one of the first things the staff had healed. _If only the rest of her would heal as easily as her broken ribs and disappear as easily as her bruises. If only the dirty feeling that ran throughout her tainted body would wash away as easily as the dried blood had done off her face and hair._

She felt a wave of light-headedness wash over her. Her body was giving into exhaustion, even if her mind wasn't. It would be a long time before that would let her relax.

_I need to sleep,_ she told herself. _I'm safe and I need to sleep. Come on, Gin, get a grip, no one can hurt you her. You're in St Mungo's, for Merlin's sake; it's safe._

She forced herself to focus on her deep breaths and felt the tension in her body start to diminish. Once she was feeling relaxed, she let her breath settle into its normal pattern.

_I'm safe now._

Ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap.

The sense of panic and worry increased in her body. It was the cold, harsh sound of metal meeting stone as someone walked up and down outside her room. She felt her breath quicken into a series of fast and shallow pants. Hardly any air filled her lungs and in her panic, her eyes flew open. _He's back, he's come back and he's going to take me back._ The footsteps were increasing as someone paced outside her room. _Don't be stupid, he can't come into St. Mungo's; he's a known Death Eater, wanted by the Ministry. It's just a Healer, a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a Weasley or Harry. They aren't going to leave you here alone, so they are bound to be outside that door._

_Harry. It's Harry out there._

A shiver ran down her spine and a plummeting feeling settled in her stomach. She felt she did not deserve him, especially after failing to muster those all important words, 'I love you'. To her shame she had found herself just nodding and walking away instead of talking to him and telling how she felt. _What on earth is wrong with you, Gin? You should have been running over and collapsing in his arms. He risked everything for you and you could not even tell him that you love him. He was the only person you thought of in that pit. He was the person who restored your faith in love after what Riddle did._

_Why couldn't life be simple and let them be two teenagers in love? _Without the wars, the guilt and the mistakes. All she had wanted to do was love Harry and become his wife, yet there always seemed to be obstacles linked to Tom Riddle that attempted to stop their happiness and mute their feelings for each other. She longed for the times when all she had to worry about was her parents and six over-protective brothers.

She gently closed her eyes; _maybe things will be better in the morning. _Her own hollow laugh echoed around her head. _Would things ever be normal again? _

_Ginny was sitting cross-legged under the large Christmas tree filling one corner of the room. She was at The Burrow for the school holidays, snuggled in front of the large fire. She pushed her legs out as she stretched her body; she had just enough room between the tree and the fire to lie down flat. She had never been able to sleep on Christmas Eve and was often awake into the early hours of Christmas morning. She would lie in her bed and wait until the last weary Weasley had traipsed up to their room. _

_Her cue for heading back downstairs was hearing the door of the bedroom opposite closing as her dad finished his act as Father Christmas. She would then quickly make her way down the stairs, being careful to watch for the noisy ones that could creak and give her away as she made her way back to the living room. She would run across the room and spend hours examining all her presents under the tree, trying to work out what they were._

_The sixteen-year-old picked up a small gift from the bottom of the tree, twisting the name tag up so she could see who it was for. Butterflies filled her stomach as she read the words, _'To Ginny, Happy Christmas, May this be the first of many, love Harry.' _She smiled broadly. Her mum was rejoicing because this was going to be the first Christmas in nine years that she would have her whole family home. But she was celebrating for another reason; this was going to be her first Christmas with Harry._

_She had spent Christmas with him before; in fact, this would be the fourth year running that she would be involved in a Christmas with Harry. But this was the first Christmas that she was going to spend the holidays in a relationship with him. She was his girlfriend and just for the next forty-eight hours, she was not going to be concerned with what was going on outside the walls of The Burrow. With Harry and her whole family home, this was going to be the best Christmas that she had ever had._

_Ginny examined the small box that fitted into the palm of her hand. The cubed shaped present was wrapped in deep red paper with a gold ribbon tied around it. She ran her fingers along the soft paper before holding it to her ear. She smiled; Harry always wrapped her gifts in Gryffindor colours. Carefully she shook it, trying to work out the small rattling sound as something slid from side to side in the box. _Well, it was either a toy car, a key ring, a golden Snitch or an item of jewellery. _She ran her hand softly over the silk paper trying to get some more clues. She wasn't Fred and George's little sister without picking up a couple of their tricks._

_"Miss Weasley," came a voice from the dark, "what do you think you are doing?"_

_"Father Christmas," she mocked softly, trying to draw Harry out of his hiding place, "is that you?"_

_"You do know that I only bring Christmas presents to good boys and girls, the rest just get lumps of coal in their stockings?"_

_"Well, that's me done for," she said with a small grin. "I guess there's no way I can change your mind, Saint Nick?"_

_"Looks like you're going to get more than a couple pieces of coal in that stocking."_

_Her smile grew. "Well, you learn something new every year and it looks to me that I have got a few presents under this tree. So, are you going to come into the light? There's a nice warm bit of floor between me and the fire with your name on it."_

_"Have you been writing my name all over the house again, Gin?" he said as he took a couple of steps into the light. Her heart jumped as she tried and failed to keep her eyes from dwelling on the boxer shorts he was wearing. "What are we going to do with you? You're mum will have your guts for garters you know."_

_"I'm mum's angel, her little girl. I thought you knew that."_

_He let out a small laugh as he rested his arms on the back of the sofa and looked over at her. "If you say so. So, is there a new broom down there?"_

_She scanned the pile and tried to hide her disappointment, this was the third year in a row she had asked for a new broomstick, but with a war going on, a new Cleansweep was an expensive luxury her parents couldn't afford. She shrugged as she looked at him. "No, it looks like it's only prefects that get new brooms. That's how it worked with Ron, Charlie and Bill anyway."_

_"Well," he grinned at her, "you never know what Father Christmas will add to the pile between now and a reasonable hour when everyone else gets up."_

_"Well," she flashed him one of her most innocent and sweet smiles as she proceeded to tease him, "I'm not too fond of waiting, I tend to like to be involved in the action, so how about we start our Christmas now? I swear I won't tell anyone else."_

_"I'm learning that more and more, Miss Weasley," he replied with a slight hint of mischief within his playful voice._

_She lifted the small box back to her ear so that it was level with his eye line and shook it softly again. "So do I get my Christmas present, now, Mr Potter?" she asked sweetly, adopting an air of innocence._

_"Well, it wouldn't really be fair," Harry said as he walked around the sofa and towards her. He smiled as he sat down next to her on the floor. "I mean, no one else is getting their presents yet."_

_"I don't want them all," she teased, "just one." _

_"I don't know, Gin," he said in mock seriousness. "It wouldn't be fair to the rest of your family."_

_She smiled innocently back at him, all the while her eyes glistened with a hint of mischief. _If he was going to play games then she had learnt from the best and become an expert. _Softly, she leaned in and placed a small kiss on his lips, before pulling away quickly, leaving him wanting it to last longer._

_"How was that for a present?"_

_"I've had better."_

_"Really?" she questioned as a smile curled across her lips. "Do you want to show it me then? Because frankly, Harry, I can't imagine what you are talking about."_

_"My Firebolt."_

_She let out a small giggle. "I thought so."_

_"Closely followed by being with you, of course."_

_"Naturally," she replied, trying to stay calm. She allowed Harry to pull her closer, her heart jumping as the gap closed between them. _

_Butterflies filled her stomach and her body trembled with anticipation as he ran his hand down her back. Her heart cartwheeled and her whole body jumped as his hand reached her backside. Their lips meet for the first time that night. As his lips parted, she slipped her tongue into his mouth, deepening the kiss and letting her tongue explore his mouth as they brushed against each other. But before she could get carried away with setting her hands to the myriad of tasks that definitely pushed against the boundaries her parents had placed upon them, she froze as she heard a noise on the stairs. The young lovers pulled apart suddenly as the noise grew louder. She placed her finger on his lips as she listened to the noise and tried to identify the footsteps._

_"Shit, that's mum," she explained in a quick whisper._

_A look of panic flashed in Harry's eyes and she shot him an encouraging smile. _That was Harry all over for you; he could face Death Eaters without breaking a sweat and was quickly becoming one of the greatest Wizards of the age, but would quake at her mother's wrath.

_"What do we do?" he asked in a voice filled with a sense of urgency and panic. "After the conversation your dad had with me the other day, they'll skin me alive."_

_"Not if they don't find out," she smiled. She got to her feet. "You surrender to things too easily, Potter. You need to learn the Weasley way of life."_

_She felt her heart pounding against her chest as she offered him her hand, which he took. A sense of sheer adrenaline took over her body as the fear of getting caught by her parents heightened. She had had a similar conversation with her mother as soon as she had stepped back in The Burrow at the start of the Christmas holidays. And she did not fancy finding out whether her mum's words had just been empty threats. Being found downstairs alone with and kissing Harry, who was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts while she was just in a nightdress, was not going to look good._

_Ginny squeezed his hand, as he quickly made their way through the living room and into the kitchen. Her eyes scanned around the kitchen, looking for an escape route that did not lead out into the cold, snow-filled garden. She felt a smile form across her lips as she glanced at him and then the cupboard under the stairs. As if he was reading her mind, he bungled her into the cupboard._

_"Brilliant," he whispered._

_"Well, I do try."_

_"Gin," he started._

_"Shh," she raised her finger back to his lips, "mum." _

Harry sat down as the Healer-in-Charge of St Mungo's private rooms, Healer Talbot, walked out of his fianc's room. The Healer was a stern, elderly looking witch who was in her mid-nineties. She had dark grey hair that hung in a long French plait at the back of her head and a disapproving glare, which she offered to Harry and the Weasley brothers as soon as she came through the door. It was almost as if they had been making too much noise while she had been examining Ginny and were now deemed guilty and in need of reproach.

He knew Healer Talbot by reputation only. She was said to be a talented witch and a great friend of the Minister of Magic, Amelia Bones. Like her friend, she was often described as 'firm, but fair' when people asked what she was like. She had a 'strict witch with a no nonsense' bedside manner. Although, the rumours whispered very quietly on the wards of St Mungo's said that her bark was much worse than her bite.

Harry had been pacing up and down the corridor for the entire time that the Healer was in the room with Ginny, feeling increasingly frustrated and impatient. On arrival at St Mungo's he had found Dumbledore waiting to see him, insisting in polite tones to find out what had taken place in the last few hours. However, he had put off talking to the Hogwarts Head Teacher until he had seen Ginny.

He knew that he needed to talk to his old Headmaster, but now was not the time. Deep down he knew that he would have to explain his actions and he was worried by the small sense of guilt that was starting to fill his body. But the sheer sense of relief that Ginny was out of the hands of Death Eaters was rapidly covering the guilt. He had made it quite clear to the leader of the Order of the Phoenix that he was not going anywhere and was not going to answer any questions until he was a hundred percent certain that Ginny was going to be okay. He was going to be there the moment that Ginny wanted and needed him.

Harry glanced over at Mr and Mrs Weasley as the Healer walked directly towards them and past him. He choose not to voice the surge of frustration that was filling his body due to the fact the elderly Healer had chosen to talk Ginny's parents instead of him, her fianc. _When were older and supposedly wiser wizards going to stop treating him like a teenage boy and respect him for the man that he had become? So what that both him and Ginny were still young, they were in love and she was his fianc. Their ages should not be used to devalue the feelings they had for each other. He should have been the first person that the witch had come to talk to. _

Mr Weasley held tightly onto his wife hand as he braced himself for hearing bad news. The normal jovial face of Arthur Weasley showed the strain of his daughter's captivity. The few wrinkles on his face had multiplied and his already thin hair had lost a few more strands. Mrs Weasley had faired little better since her little girl had gone missing. Her normal plump face had thinned and paled so that she now looked as white as a ghost, except for the area around her eyes which was bright red. Her hands had been trembling with nerves from the minute her daughter had been admitted to St Mungo's, but she had started to calm a little in her husband's firm hold.

"Mr and Mrs Weasley?"

"Yes," Mr Weasley confirmed as both he and his wife instantly got to his feet and he gave her hand an extra squeeze. "How is she? How's my little girl?" he asked in a soft voice, desperate for both answers and some form of hope.

"Physically, she well and healing very satisfactory," the experienced Healer replied in a business-like tone. "When Ginerva-"

"Ginny," Harry announced, finding it hard to keep his anger under control as he got to his feet and walked over to the Healer and her parents. "Her name is Ginny."

No one dared called Ginny by her full name, except maybe her mother, unless they had either a death wish or wanted to feel the full force of the fiery redhead's temper.

The old witch frowned at him. Her disapproving glare deemed him unworthy of interrupting or questioning her. Especially in a situation when she had such important information to tell them.

"When Ginny arrived, Mr and Mrs Weasley, she had substantial injuries to both her mind and body. She was suffering from a series of broken ribs, particularly the ones that are connected to the sternum, which, left untreated, can lead to problems concerning the lungs. She had deep and infected cuts on her face and a large amount of bruising across her entire body. On my questioning of Miss Weasley, she confirmed my fears that she had been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse for a number of hours. She is still very weak and suffering from exhaustion. It appears that she used large amounts of energy and her natural reserves in fights against her captors."

Tears had escaped from Mr Weasley's eyes as he had listened to the description of his daughter's condition. Yet there had been a hint of pride that had glowed across his face as the Healer spoke about Ginny's resilience. "That's my girl," he whispered softly to his wife.

"Our girl, Arthur," his wife reminded him in muffled tones as she raised a tear stained handkerchief to her face. "She never does give without a fight."

Arthur Weasley smiled at his wife as he pulled her even closer to him. "Well, she does take after her mother, Molly dear."

"She need a series of healthy meals, loving care and Strengthening Solutions over the next few days. Although there will be no physical difference to her state prior to capture," the witch continued as if she had not been interrupted, "she needs to remember to take it easy and have lots of bed rest. She should not be partaking in any form of any strenuous activity for a while nor leaving the house."

"Good luck," Fred muttered under his breath.

"Physically, she is as well as anyone can expect. She is obviously a very healthy and active young woman. And I have to say, if her physical health was my only concern, I would be releasing her today with a set of appropriate potions."

"But," Harry said, waiting for her to mention the problem that had been a nagging doubt in his mind since he had seen her on that field with Malfoy.

"The problem arises, Mr Potter," the elderly witch explained, focusing her attention on him for the first time, "when you look at the non-physical issues. To be brutally honest, I am very worried about Miss Weasley's mental state." Her voice softened and you could hear a clear Scottish accent as she broke away from her business-like-tone. "Ginny has been through a terrible ordeal, the full extent of which one can only imagine. It has taken great spirit and courage to even be at the stage she is now, but that was not without consequences." She paused briefly before continuing. "This is something that she is not going to recover from overnight."

"We understand that," said Harry slowly, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "I just want to know what _we _can do to help."

"Ginny is going to need all the support and love you can give her. She has a large loving family and lots of friends, and she is going to need all of that," the Healer replied in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "But I'm afraid at the moment she is rejecting any form of help. She is feeling a mixture of guilt and a deep sense of shame. I'm afraid for the present time she does not want to see any of you."

"Any of us?" Harry questioned in a hollow voice.

She studied his face for a minute before replying in a voice that contained her first hint of compassion as she spoke in a soft tone. "Yes, Mr Potter, any of you … for the time being."

Tears fell down Mrs Weasley's pale face; she looked like she could hardly stand to hear anything else. "How can she think that? How can she feel like that and not want to see us? Does she not know how much we love her?"

"Everyone reacts differently to traumatic experiences, Mrs Weasley. However, it is not unusual for people to turn away from the people who love them the most, especially after enduring what your daughter has in the last couple of days. As no doubt Albus has already explained."

Mr Weasley nodded. "So what do you recommend we do?"

"You need to give her time and don't pressure her. Be there, talk and listen to her, but don't rush things. There are parts of the body, and indeed the mind, that can't be healed overnight." Her voice had lost the sternness that had characterised their earlier exchanges. "It is important to make things as normal as possible and not treat her any differently. She is still the same person that you all love so much, but she has chosen to lock that part of her away. We just need to be patient so that we can help her bring that part of her back into the light.

"However, due to her mental state, I have left her with a draft for a dreamless sleep, which she has been instructed to take. Therefore, for the moment I recommend you let her sleep. She needs to build back up her strength. And looking at you all, it is something I would like to suggest for the rest of you. The next few days and weeks are going to be hard and you will need all the strength you have. Go home and get some rest, and come back refreshed later."

Healer Talbot gave them a small nod. "Now if you will excuse me I have other patients to see. I will be back to check on her in a couple of hours."

"Thank you for your time," Mr Weasley said as he watched the Healer disappear down the corridor. "Well, boys," he said as he took command of the situation, "I think its better that we listen to the advice of the professionals and you all go home and get some rest."

"Are you sure, dad?" Bill queried in a stubborn tone that clearly showed he was not overly keen on the idea of leaving.

"Positive," he replied in a firm tone Harry had never heard him use before that clearly showed the matter was settled.

Bill was the first to get to his feet, slowly followed by the others. None of them really wanted to leave but they could see the sense in what the Healer had said. And, truth be told, now that the adrenalin wasn't pumping through their systems, their lack of sleep was beginning to get the better of them.

Harry stayed quiet as one by one they hugged their mother before walking reluctantly down the corridor. Ron was the last to leave, scowling at Hermione as she pulled at his arm. No matter how old they were, the brothers would always listen to what their parents had to say on important issues. Out of respect for their parents, they waited until they reached the end of the corridor before the conversation burst into life.

Arthur Weasley looked resignedly at Harry as he studied the younger man's face, glancing at the closed door to the private room. "I'm guessing that you're not going to go home, Harry," he said in a resigned tone.

"You're guessing right, Mr Weasley."

The elder man nodded his approval as he turned to his wife. "Now, Molly dear, I know that you won't want to leave here, but how about a strong cup of tea with maybe something a little extra in it upstairs?"

"I can't leave her, Arthur, she's my baby."

"We are not leaving her, but she's asleep now and no one is going through those doors at the moment." Mr Weasley said in a gentle but encouraging voice. "And I'm sure Harry will tell us if anything happens. Besides, he will be the first person she wants to see."

Harry admired the confidence that Mr Weasley had, he was not sure that Ginny wanted to see him.

With that, Mrs Weasley offered him a weak smile before heading down the corridor with her husband's arm around her. After watching them disappear up the stairs to the caf, Harry scanned up and down the corridor to check that it was clear. _It didn't matter at all what the Healer had said; I'm going through that door to see her. I'll be in that room the second that she wakes. _

Slowly, he got to his feet and pushed open the door to the private room. It was a cold white room with a couple of chairs, a table and only the one bed in the centre. In the middle of the bed, her knees drawn up tightly to her chest, was Ginny. Her face was almost as white as the spotless sheets on the bed. Her red eyes were wide open, staring aimlessly out the window.

"Gin," he said softly.

She turned her head to look at him and offered him a small smile. As he watched her lips curve into its familiar smile, an instant flood of relief started to fill his body. "Hi, Harry."

"You look better," he replied as he walked towards her bed.

"Well, I couldn't have looked much worse," her small smile grew into the beginnings of a grin. For the briefest second her eyes twinkled and Harry saw her body relax.

"Too right, Weasley." Encouraged by her smile, he paused as he reached the end of her bed. "They said that you did not want to see anyone, so if you want, I can go."

"You're not just anyone, Harry."

"That's a good thing, right?" he asked, unsure of whether he wanted her response. _She had been so distant in the last few hours. _

"Of course, it's a good thing," she replied, using her hand to pat the bed beside her and invited him to sit down on the bed with her. "What happened with Malfoy?" she asked, fixing her tear stained eyes on him and her voice filled with concern. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he replied automatically. She glared at him, refusing to buy his off pat response. "Okay, I'm not fine. But I'll survive now you're back."

Ginny frowned. "We need to do more than surviving; we need to live. Don't you think?"

"Yeah," his smile grew, "so what are we going to do about it?"

She reached over and took his hand as she spoke in a soft voice, "I don't know. But what I do know is that together we'll work it out, we always do."

He studied her face for a moment. _Where had this new attitude come from? How had she spun around three hundred and sixty degrees so quickly? The Healer had said it would take time. _

"Not that I want to question things, but what made you change your mind?"

She shrugged. "I've had a lot of time to think, think about people who love me."

His smile grew. "I've never stopped."

"Neither have I," Ginny said softly. "I know I'm not going to be okay overnight and neither are you. So, Mr Potter, you can drop the 'I'm fine act', I know you better than that. We'll work through it, okay?" She looked him directly in the eyes. "And the first step is for you to take me home."


	10. Epilogue

Prisoner of War

Mature 

**Summary: **Curiosity gets the better of eighteen-year-old Ginny as she tries to prove a point to her older brothers and disappears in Knockturn Alley. After a stunning spell the young Weasley finds herself suffering from the horrors of being a Prisoner of War. While Harry refuses to believe that she may be dead, Ginny turns to an unlikely source of help at Malfoy Manor.

**Warning:** Although allusion is made regarding the horrifying treatment toward female prisoners of war, this story does not contain explicit descriptions of sexual mistreatment.

Epilogue: Prisoner of War

Ginny stared at the small oval-shaped glass bottle that contained a black liquid as she turned the bottle of Harriet Drapper's Luxury Brown Hair Dye Potion around and read the instructions. _'Take this potion in its entirety and receive a glossy new hair colour within seconds. To make this effect permanent repeat every six months.' _

It would be so easy to swallow the potion and watch her hair change from the vibrant red to a safe and familiar mousy brown colour. A colour that would mean she would finally be able to fade into the background instead of standing out in a crowd. With two large gulps from the green bottle resting in the palm of her hand, maybe, just maybe her life would become easier.

But then again, it would not change anything that had already happened. The potion did not contain any added memory charms and her past would not change with the loss of her red hair. In reality, her red hair, freckles and surname was as much a part of her as anything else and helped make her who she was. And she did not really want any part of her to change.

It was her life, past, experiences and her mistakes. Instead of looking for quick fix solutions, she should be learning from this. And if she changed anything about herself, then she would just be letting Riddle's scum win.

She studied the red marks around her eyes in the mirror. It was time that the involuntary crying fits stopped. She could not start to rebuild and live her life when she did not know if the floods of tears were going to stream out of her eyes at a second's notice. And the only cues for her tears to start were her own self-pity and other people feeling sorry for her. So it made sense that the only way to stop them was to move on with her life. And being locked in her bedroom for the past week wasn't helping the way she had hoped. Hadn't she always told Harry that they had to live their lives and not let Riddle control them?

Besides, she smiled softly, even if she did change what she looked like, Harry wasn't going to change his appearance. And he was clearly the most recognisable Wizard in the world. She was not going to disappear out of his life. She glanced at her ring; she was staying with him for as long as she lived, like she had decided when she had accepted his proposal.

Slowly, she pulled out the brittle cork out of the bottle and held it up against the bathroom light. Two mouthfuls would change things. She smiled ruefully, _she could not see herself as a brunette._ Slowly she turned the bottle upside down and the potion started to trickle down the sink.

She was Ginny Weasley and damn proud of it, freckles and red hair included. No Death Eater would ever have the power to change that. None of Riddle's cronies would make her feel the way she had when she had written in that bloody book seven years ago. Otherwise, she might as well have died on that cold and dirty stone floor in the pit.

Water gushed from the tap and dark liquid washed through the sink. Her smile emerged and grew as the corners of her lips twitched, and the potion swirled around the sink making black shapes before disappearing. _If only those cowards in masks would vanish as easily._

"Ginny," her mother's voice rattled up the stairs. "Are you out of bed?"

She scooped up some of the water directly from the tap in her cupped hands and threw it over her face. _It was time to end the same self-pitying bed rest._ She was as sick of the four walls in her bedroom as she had been St Mungo's. She was going to get her life back and that was going to start right now.

"I can hear you walking around up there, young lady!"

She rolled her eyes letting out a small sigh, quickly making her way back to her room before her mother could come up and collar her, demanding to know what she was doing out of bed. Her sigh grew; she knew her mum was trying to protect her and look after her the best way she knew how, by stopping her little girl from getting hurt. But that wasn't the person she was, the person she wanted to be, nor the life she had missed when she had been away from it.

Her smile grew into a grin and her eyes sparkled. Harry had said as her mum had shoed him out the house that if she needed anything today that she could find him at one of their favourite Muggle pubs with Ron and Hermione. Well, if Harry could go out for a couple of drinks then so could she.

"Don't make me come up those stairs, Ginerva Weasley!"

Grabbing her old, red sports jacket off the chair by the desk, she threw it over her shoulders. Jeans, shirt and jacket; okay for a Muggle pub. Catching her reflection in the mirror, she pulled up the hood on her jacket. She studied herself for a minute, _who was she hiding from?_ Biting her bottom lip, she threw down the big, baggy sports coat and pulled on a dark blue, denim jacket. Scooping her vibrant red hair out of her jacket, she paused as the white streak fell into her hands. A constant reminder of her stupidity.

Her hair flared as she Disapparated and reappeared outside the Muggle pub 'The Speckled Hen.' There was just something about Muggle pubs that were safer than the Wizarding ones. They tended to be the last place in the world that Death Eaters would go, making them the safest place to escape to. And in her opinion, Muggle pubs were far more interesting than Wizarding ones, or maybe that was just because they were different to the ones that she had grown up visiting.

Pushing open the doors, she scanned the room for Harry as she stood in 'The Speckled Hen's' entrance. It was much easier to find someone without the masses of coloured smoke that filled Wizarding pubs. Locating him sitting with Hermione at one of the corner tables, she made her way over to him. She smiled as he got to his feet and pulled out a chair for her.

"When did you learn to be a gentleman, Potter?" she asked as she took her seat.

"I've always been a gentleman, Weasley," he said as he smiled and leaned over to kiss her.

Her heart fluttered as Harry's lips meet hers. She slowly opened her mouth as he raised his hands to cup her face, and her tongue slipped between his lips. Their tongues touched and her whole body trembled as the kiss deepened. A series of butterflies filled her stomach as her sense of anticipation grew and her hand slipped onto his leg. She moved her hand slowly up his leg until she reached his jean pocket. Her heart pounded against her ribcage as her tongue explored his mouth, and all her thoughts that normally filled her mind disappeared. She was back where she belonged, with Harry.

Hermione's cough interrupted them from going any further with the myriad of desires that would have easily got them thrown out of the pub, and she straightened her face as she slowly pulled away. "Since you're such a gentleman, does that mean that you are going to get up and get me a drink?"

"Ron's up there getting them as we speak," he replied with a small smile, blushing slightly as he glance over at Hermione. "Do you want me go and tell him to get you one."

"That makes a change," she said, mouth twitching into a grin as her eyes flicked towards the bar and her brother's vivid red hair standing out in the crowd before returning her attention back to Harry and Hermione. "So what has the infamous trio been gossiping about?"

Harry rubbed the back of his neck as his face reddened further. "Nothing in particular."

Shooting him an innocent smile, she turned her attention to Hermione. From the looks on their guilty faces, she knew exactly what they had been talking about. And to this day, her brother's girlfriend had never failed to answer one of her questions.

"Hermione?" she asked as she made her appeal to the older girl.

"Well, Ginny," she started as she glanced down before looking up and meeting her eyes, "we, we were actually talking about you. We want to help. How are you?"

"I'm getting there, getting better."

"You look better," Hermione agreed with a small genuine smile, "much better than when you were in St Mungo's and almost back to your old self."

"Well, I'd hardly look like anyone else."

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ron demanded as he came over and interrupted their conversation. He slammed the tray with three drinks down on the table and beer slipped over the top of his and Harry's pint glasses. "Who let you out the house?"

"No one let me out the house!" she spat back as she felt her temper flare, she did not need Ron doing the over protective big brother gig today and him treating her like a child. "You see, brother dear, I'm quite able to leave a house on my own."

"But you have been told to rest!"

Her eyes twinkled as she sent Harry a smile. She was not going to stay around and be lectured. With Ron it was always best to fight fire with fire. "Have you any idea how boring bed rest is alone? I'm not going to break if I live my life."

"But you are not indestructible!" Ron shouted as his ears glowed red and Hermione made 'shhing' noises. "When are you going to learn, Ginny, that you can't run out of the house when you want. You can't go disappearing into Knockturn Alley without consequences!"

"And you think I don't know that!" she hissed as her emotions twisted between anger at Ron shouting at her and relief that people had finally stopped tiptoeing around her.

One of the worst things about the last week was people were nervous around her. They had treated her like a porcelain doll that would break if they raised their voices. And the more people had treated her like that, the more she had become like a porcelain doll that would erupt into tears at a moment's notice. That wasn't who she was and neither was it the actions her family wanted to take. They wanted to shout at her as much as she wanted to get her life back together and that was not going to happen while they were tiptoeing around her.

"Well, what the hell do you think you were doing then?"

"Ron!" Hermione interrupted in a hushed voice as she reached for his hand and slowly stroked it. "Let it rest."

"Rest! My little sister has a death wish. And you say, 'let it rest!'"

"Don't we all have one?" Harry offered to his friend as he held Ginny back. "And even if we don't have one, life doesn't look to well at us. People want to kill us all the time."

"So why make it easy for them?"

"We're not, we are just trying to live."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Ginny agreed as she got to her feet. She was not going to leave one scene of captivity and mollycoddling for it to be replaced with another form of confinement. At eighteen she was an adult that had seen and experienced more than many people twice her age and was going to be treated as such, not lectured about the wrong decisions and mistakes she had made. Unable to look at her brother's face any longer, she turned to Harry. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah," he replied with a small shrug.

"Gin," Ron offered in an uneasy voice as Hermione eyed him suspiciously.

"What?" she replied, placing her hands on her hips and her hair seemed to crackle with anger.

"Be careful."

"I will," she whispered as she slipped her hand into Harry's and turned to leave.

Fin


End file.
